Engineering Outreach
By Katie Smart
As
engineering students we all know how important helping our community is. Each
semester we strive to help the community. In one semester we work for at least
15 hours of community service. For some of us this is difficult, but if we all
try it is not difficult to work above and beyond this requirement.
One of
the ways that I was able to work towards the completion of my community service
hours was to work with Ron Ulseth, Jim Boyd and Kody Kamunen at the College of
Saint Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota.
Here we
worked with high school students teaching them basic principles of engineering,
communication, teamwork, and design. The students were given limited materials
to create marble rollercoasters. We told them the constraints, gave them five
minutes to design their idea and they had 20 minutes to make it work.
Their groups were chosen at random, most had students from
other schools combined to form their groups. As their designs were created and
they started building and testing their rollercoasters the students found out
not all things were as easy as it seemed.
Overall the students had a fantastic time learning about the
engineering process and even earned some Iron Range Engineering t-shirts and
lanyards.
Proof read by Shawn Tobolaski
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