{"id":76288,"date":"2018-09-05T09:37:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T13:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=76288"},"modified":"2022-10-21T16:40:59","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T20:40:59","slug":"u-design-teaches-engineering-to-middle-school-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2018\/09\/05\/u-design-teaches-engineering-to-middle-school-students\/","title":{"rendered":"U-Design Teaches Engineering to Middle-School Students"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Students, mentors and teachers from U-Design 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Liz Sheeley<\/em><\/p>\n

About 80 middle school students gained exposure to engineering concepts \u2013 many for the first time \u2013 through the hands-on U-Design<\/a> program over the summer. The annual U-Design program, sponsored by the College each July, gives the youngsters a chance to build something, have fun doing it, and begin to consider the possibility of an engineering career.<\/p>\n

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The Flight School 101 workshop gives students a chance to learn about flight principles in a hands-on way.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOne of the goals of the U-Design is to get traditionally underrepresented and underserved kids excited about engineering through hands-on exploration,\u201d says Assistant Dean of Outreach and Diversity Stacey Freeman. \u201cOur hope is that programs like these will increase the number of women and racially diverse students who choose engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students are mostly from the Boston area and the College offers scholarships for up to half of the participants. ENG undergraduates, mostly from the Technology Innovation Scholars Program<\/a> (TISP), act as mentors to the students, with lead teachers from local high schools who have been working with U-Design and TISP for many years.<\/p>\n

Two of the TISP undergraduates who participated in U-Design, Esther Huynh (ME \u201919) and Eva Gee (ME \u201920), said the students came in with a mix of backgrounds and knowledge about engineering, but that they were glad some who had never considered engineering were getting excited about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never been exposed to engineering as a possible career path when I was in middle or high school,\u201d says Huynh. \u201cIt\u2019s great to get students interested in STEM and also gives me the chance to apply what I\u2019ve learned at BU into a very practical setting, which is definitely satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Students learn about programming robots to move around mazes in the Robo-Alley workshop.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A student learns about electrical circuits in the Gizmos workshop.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The U-Design program featured three workshops: Electrical and Mechanical Gizmos; Robo-Alley; and Flight School 101. The Gizmos workshop focused on designing and building electrical circuits, while Robo-Alley gives students the chance to learn coding basics to integrate into a robot. Flight School teaches students about the mechanics of flight and provides hands-on experience building gliders and rockets.<\/p>\n

In addition to the course work, the students also tour ENG faculty lab spaces, hear lectures from researchers, and see how what they\u2019re learning is applied to solving real-world problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About 80 middle school students gained exposure to engineering concepts \u2013 many for the first time \u2013 through the hands-on U-Design program over the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13786,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13786"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127189,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76288\/revisions\/127189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}