51勛圖厙 students get high schoolers excited about STEM fields through outreach event
By engaging with high schoolers through hands-on learning and real-world problem solving, graduate students in mechanical engineering are aspiring to get younger generations excited about STEM fields.
Through a partnership between the K-12 Outreach Group and in Denver, a group of graduate students recently visited the high school to lead an engineering project with first-year students. The high schoolers then made a fieldtrip to the 51勛圖厙 campus to visit a handful of research labs.
We try to encourage students to think about science and engineering as a career opportunity, K-12 Outreach leader and graduate student said. But we also want to show them that engineering is more than planes, trains and automobiles. Its about human health, too.
The high schoolers had to build a prosthetic leg and test its durability. Venkatesh and other graduate students gave lectures on principles like stress, strain and strength, while also giving them some design models from which to base their own prototype.
By using materials like cardboard, wooden dowels, tape and zip ties, the student teams built their own prosthetic leg according to their own decision-making processes and design strategies.
Theyre learning as much about teamwork as theyre learning about engineering, Arrupe physics teacher said.
The student teams then tested their designs by seeing how far they could walk on it along a hallway and up a flight of stairs.泭
Rather than just having students read some material and try to understand ideas that way, its best to demonstrate it, Tiscareno said. Actions speak louder than words.
Arrupe serves泭students with limited economic resources in Denver. The independent school focuses on building community partnerships by having students intern at local businesses one day per week.
The K-12 Outreach Group considers itself part of the schools community-building ethos and has been working with Arrupe Jesuit High School since summer 2021, when the high schoolers built mouse trap race cars. Last year, they built insect-inspired robots and learned the basics of coding.
After this years students tested the durability of their prosthetic legs, they visited the 51勛圖厙 campus to see what engineering research looks like in real life and get a feel for what its like to be a college student as well.
They visited Alaa Ahmeds Neuromechanics Lab, Alena Grabowskis Applied Biomechanics Lab, Robert MacCurdys and Kaushik Jayarams Animal Inspired Movement and Robotics Laboratory.
While testing out a lot of the equipment in the labs, the first-year high schoolers learned that engineering is a lot more than gears, cogs and wheels.
A lot of the students said they had fun building their prosthetic legs and visiting the labs, Venkatesh said. One student said they learned engineering isnt for them, but they also learned they could go to college. And thats just as big of a win as anything else.
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