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Engineering fair to bring
schools together
By Diana Swanson
Staff
Writer
Envision building a robot, learning how a nuclear
reactor works or discovering the secret to producing a state-of-the-art
tractor.
Now, envision an annual event that brings hundreds
of students together for one day to share innovations and familiarize
themselves with the 14 schools that make up engineering at Purdue University.
Call it Envision, Purdue's first engineering fair
that will create a venue for the exchange of ideas, not just for engineers,
but for the entire student body.
Bridget Maddox, a junior in material engineering
and a member of Purdue's Engineering Student Council, calls it the Bugbowl
of engineering, because there will be numerous hands-on activities.
Several of the engineering schools and organizations will set up booths
where they will host demonstrations, speakers and information covering
their specific discipline.
For instance, The Nuclear Society will be giving
tours of the nuclear reactor located in the Nuclear Engineering building,
and the Freshman Engineering Student Advisory Council will provide their
spectators with robotic Lego kits to teach them how to build
and program robots.
Envision will have the robot that was built
by West Lafayette High School students and the Purdue Student Engineering
Foundation on display, along with other contraptions like the Rube Goldberg
machines, which are complicated machines designed to perform a simple
task, such as peeling an orange.
In addition, representatives from John Deere will
be on hand, along with one of their tractors, to explain what type of
engineering goes into the tractor's construction and how it functions.
Purdue's Engineering Student Council elected to
host the engineering fair at Purdue after attending a National Conference
of Engineering Student Councils this fall in Seattle. The University
of Illinois has been conducting an engineering fair for over 80 years,
and it has proven beneficial to their community.
The fair will act as a persuasive recruitment tool
to promote Purdue's engineering facility to incoming freshmen, as well
as a device to keep current students informed about each discipline's
objectives. But most important, Maddox said, is the goal of enhanced
communications between the 14 engineering schools, as well as the entire
community.
Maddox is optimistic about Envision, and thinks
it is just what Purdue's engineering program needs to minimize its information
gap.
Envision is a free event open to all majors, faculty
members, high school and elementary school students and anyone in the
surrounding community who is interested. Envision will be held from
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 7 in the Engineering Mall.
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Campus editor:
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