Education

JANUARY 2010:
More than 500 students from throughout the region will vie for a trip to Washington, D.C., as they compete in the Pittsburgh Regional Future City Competition at Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh on Saturday, January 16, 2010.

Participants were challenged to design a city of the future displaying residential, commercial and industrial areas, power plants, transportation, and communication systems—all with attention to “green,” environmentally friendly concerns. Students will address important issues such as pollution, traffic density, taxes, and budgets while creating their city. The students have worked in teams for the past several months under the guidance of a teacher and volunteer engineer mentor to research, design, and build their city, first in the SimCity™ 4 Deluxe software, and then as a physical model for the competition.

Students also write an essay as part of the competition, this year addressing the theme “Providing an Affordable Living Space for People Who Have Lost Their Home Due to a Disaster or Financial Emergency.”

“The students participating in the Pittsburgh Regional Future City Competition are highly motivated, inquisitive, and eager to develop new solutions for everyday challenges,” says Carol Schoemer, Carnegie Science Center staff educator and Future City Competition regional coordinator. “The can-do spirit among these kids is inspiring and fun to witness. Every year they surprise me with the ingenious designs and processes they create to solve problems present in cities in the competition. It’s hard to believe they are just seventh- and eighth-graders. It really makes you hopeful about the world they will create one day.”

The top winners of the 2009 Pittsburgh region have registered for the 2010 competition: Mary Queen of Apostles School (first place) and St. Bede School (second place). A complete list of schools registered for the current Pittsburgh region competition is available below.

First-place winners from each qualifying regional competition receive a trip to the 18th annual Future City National Finals in Washington, D.C., February 12–17, 2010, during National Engineers Week. National grand prize is a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., provided by National Finals Host Bentley Systems, Inc. Other prizes include scholarships, computers, and savings bonds. In addition, teams will be eligible for special awards and recognition sponsored by engineering societies and other organizations. More than 33,000 students from 1,100 middle schools are expected to participate nationwide.

In Future City, one of the nation’s largest engineering education programs and among the most popular, students create cities on computers using the SimCity™ 4 Deluxe software and then build three-dimensional, tabletop models to scale. To ensure a level playing field, models must use recycled materials and can cost no more than $100 to build. Students also write brief abstracts describing their city and must present and defend their designs at the competition before a panel of engineer judges who test the depth of the teams’ knowledge.

That knowledge is often extensive, as shown by the competition’s essays, which require seventh- and eighth-graders to explore complex challenges and ideas that most adults would consider over their heads.

The Pittsburgh Regional Future City Competition is presented by Carnegie Science Center and the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania, and is sponsored in part by Shell Oil Company.

DECEMBER 2009:
Teams from 35 high schools across the region donned their thinking caps and accepted the challenge of constructing a building in at least 20 steps for the Chain Reaction Contraption Contest on Friday, December 4.

The competition, powered by Westinghouse Electric Company and held at Carnegie Science Center, allowed teenage students to debut their contraptions after months of tinkering, designing, and inventing a complex machine to “construct a building” in a most inefficient way. Chain Reaction Contraption is part of Carnegie Science Center’s celebration of National Engineers Week.

Most people view machines as the epitome of efficiency, designed to make work processes faster and easier. The ideal machine requires few steps and uses as little energy as possible. The Chain Reaction Contraption competition reverses that thinking by providing students a challenge—this year’s task being to construct a building—and forcing them to complete the task in at least 20 steps to evaluate critical thinking and engineering skills.

“Chain Reaction Contraption focuses on the problem-solving and creative aspects of engineering,” said Linda Ortenzo, director of Carnegie Science Center’s Regional SciTech Initiative. “So many people think engineers need to be skilled only in math and science, but they also need to be able to bring a new perspective to a challenge and really think as they work to solve issues. These are vital skills for engineers.”

Since the beginning of the school year, the competing teams have completed several steps, including providing a design proposal in October and submitting several photographic progress reports during the construction and testing phases.

“Building a machine or a new product requires a level of documentation that we wanted the students to experience,” said Lisa Kosick, coordinator of the Chain Reaction Contraption Contest. “The competition isn’t just about throwing together as many steps as possible to get the job done, but planning and then adapting those plans during the process to reach a specific outcome.”

Built from everyday household items, the students were only limited in their construction by size (no larger than five feet high, three feet wide, and two feet deep) and a prohibition against the use of plug-in electrical equipment or animals. Relying primarily on the general laws of physics and the occasional battery to power their machines, the machines must include at least 20 steps and take at least 30 seconds to complete the task. Each machine must successfully complete the task at least eight times during the course of the competition.

The 2008 competition, won by Bay High School, required students to wrap or unwrap a present in 20 steps or more.

The Chain Reaction Contraption competition is made possible by the generous support of Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC, and the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania.

OCTOBER 2009:
On October 28, the ESWP conducted our 3rd biennial Technical Society Fair. The Fair was host to 15 different exhibits that displayed a variety of the technical and educational expertise of our members and partners. During the Fair, ESWP’s Career Outreach Committee presented an informative program that focused on STEM education in the K-12 environment. Speakers included Dr. Bill Cook, supervisor of the Pittsburgh Public School Career and Technical Education Division; Dr. Reeny Davison, Executive Director of ASSET, Inc.; and Ms. Annette Waldron Educational Outreach Coordinate of WQED Multimedia, and sponsors of the Design Squad. Each speaker detailed a variety of programs that are already in place, and presented some encouraging results from students that have participated in these programs. Further, we learned about many new and developing programs that are being planned for the future, in many cases in partnership with ESWP. In addition to the 3 organizations that had a speaking role at the Fair, attendees also enjoyed a chance to visit displays from ACE Mentoring, Smart Futures PA E-Mentoring, Engineers Without Borders, and SPEO-Southwest Pennsylvania Engineering Outreach.

JULY 2009:
Several ESWP members volunteered to host teachers from the Pittsburgh Public Schools over the summer as part of the “Educator in the Workplace” program. Educator in the Workplace is a program that enables educators to experience a summer workplace externship to better understand the relationship between school-based and work-based learning. The Educator in the Workplace experience is designed to influence the educator’s implementation of the Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Career Education and Work, which are required of all students in the state. Teacher visits take place over a three-day period. While we were fortunate to have many sites made available, we were only able to place one teacher during this summer’s program. The teacher was able to visit PennDOT, Siemens Environmental Services and Loftus Engineers over the three-day program, and came away with a wealth of experience that will be valuable in the classroom.

MAY 2009:
Several members of the ESWP recently participated in the May 19 meeting of the Occupational Advisory Committee; Pittsburgh Public Schools. The meeting was held at Taylor-Allderdice School. Glenn Avick, Loftus Engineers; Daniel J. Tis, Siemens Energy Corporation; Michael P. Roarty, P.J. Dick Inc.; Kenneth R. Marino: Wayne Crouse, Inc.; Charles Toran: Sci-Tek Consultants, Inc., Tammi A. Halapin: Collective Efforts, LLC all represented ESWP. Members of the committee discussed current curriculum and toured the facility to offer input of the relevancy and applicability to today’s business & engineering environments. Following this initial meeting, Dan Tis commented that “I was more than pleasantly surprised, amazed actually, at the depth and scope of their current program. I had no idea they were so innovative at a Pittsburgh Public Schools.”

MAY 2009:
The ESWP recently entered into a new relationship with the Pittsburgh Public School’s (PPS) Career and Technical Education Department as a member of their Local Executive Advisory Board. Through this relationship, ESWP will assist PPS in developing programs for students enrolled in their Taylor-Allderdice, Peabody and new STEM high schools. Students, teachers and counselors will all have the opportunity to benefit from this relationship by interacting with members of the ESWP.

On September 27, 2008 representatives of the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania met with about 25 high school teachers on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University to explain what civil engineers really do! The seminar was part of the 'Engineering Workshop for Science and Mathematics Educators' program which is funded by the Siemens Foundation, and facilitated by Judy Hallinen at the Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning and Outreach at Carnegie Mellon. ESWP Directors Dominick DeSalvo, Dan Tis and Deborah Lange each spoke about the path of their respective journeys into the world of engineering through high school, college and employment. The teachers also viewed portions of the new video program produced by Rick Sebak (WQED), “Invented, Engineered and Pioneered in Pittsburgh.”

The session began with 'concept mapping;' an exercise which demonstrated that many people think of civil engineering as being limited to the design of roads and bridges. Throughout the course of the day, we discussed many other facets of civil engineering, including land development, water and wastewater treatment, building construction, earthquake design, nanotechnology, and much more including and the link to other fields of engineering such as biomedical and mechanical. The group then explored the profile of a student that might be interested, the courses that might be offered and the wide range of opportunities that await graduating engineers - from engineering practice to medicine to law to business!

The teachers were quite engaged in the discussion and provided feedback about how the ESWP might assist them in their teaching and guidance efforts going forward. Out of 25 teacher participants, the following services were selected by the number at the end of the statement.

The ESWP is considering this input (and welcomes additional input!) as we embark on our Engineering & Outreach Program. If you would like more information about the programs that are available, please contact Dr. Deborah Lange through the ESWP at 412-261-0710.

To encourage the interest in the engineering profession in today's youth, we provide links to sites that encourage this pursuit.

Volunteers

ACE Mentor Program Western PA Chapter is seeking Mentor Volunteers.

The ACE Mentor Program provides high school students the opportunity to connect with professionals in the ACE industry. Volunteers are asked
to:

This is a great opportunity to join a new chapter and make a difference in the lives of young people. These young people are the future of the ACE Industry!

Recent events were hosted by the ESWP, Green Building Alliance, DMJM Harris, the International Masonry Institute (IMI), and P.J. Dick. In January 2009, the IMI hosted 25 students at BAC Local 9 to participate in hands-on masonry trades. Volunteers from Cost Company, MARSA, Inc., and MI Friday assisted the students.

For more information, please visit http://www.acementor.org/668

For more information on the ESWP's Programs, please e-mail eswp@eswp.com

ESWP: Education and Outreach

Education and Outreach

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