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The February 17, 2006 Engineers Week Dinner at the Clarion Hotel in Colorado
Springs was a huge success in spite of the cold snowy weather. The featured
speaker, Dr. Audrey Nelson, said she drove from Boulder to north Colorado
Springs with no problems and then had to deal with the rush hour traffic
problems on I-25 (with which we're all so familiar).
Audrey's presentation
on the topic "The Art of Conscious Communication -- A Talent for a Technical
Age" was interesting and enjoyable to the 50 people in attendance. Audrey
caught and maintained everyone's attention for an hour with her interesting
and thought provoking instructions and comments on how to communicate more
effectively.
Connie King thanked NSPE/PEC-PPC, SAME-PPP, ASME, ASCE-SCB and
IEEE for publicizing this event to their members and specifically thanked
Dale Watts of NSPE/PEC-PPC, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Brubaker and Mikki
Anderson of SAME-PPP, Angela Howard and Carole Passmore of SWE-PPS, and her
husband Russ Noblett for their help with the meeting.
One of the first middle schools in Colorado Springs to feature the Project
Lead the Way -- Gateway to Engineering Pre-Engineering Program is District
11's Irving Middle School. Teacher Gary Hilty asked SWE-PPS's Career
Guidance Chair, Connie King, if she could provide 12 engineers to speak to
his Irving Middle School students during Engineers Week.
As a result of
Connie's requests to various engineering societies and individual engineers,
18 engineers volunteered to speak to the students and Gary was delighted
with this huge response!
These engineers did an outstanding job speaking to
the students about their engineering careers: Jeff Davis, Guenther Polok,
Judy Long, Tina Cox, Gary Leffingwell, Travis Boone, Erin Parr, Mike Guyote,
Jim Cain, Abby Ortega, Balu Bhayani, Ken Merola, John Reis, Kevin Ross,
Bethany Trumble, Ted Driver, Neil Case and Bob Cleaver.
An article in the
March 1, 2006 The Gazette newspaper's Slice section reported on the success
of this engineering career guidance effort at Irving Middle School.
On February 23, National Engineers Week ‘Introduce a Girl to Engineering' Day, 72 girls from Eagleview and Holmes Middle Schools toured the Arrows West – Garden of the Gods high tech companies.
Agilent Technologies, Inc., Intel Corporation, JR Engineering, and Vitesse organized by the Society of Women Engineers Pikes Peak Section sponsored ‘The AmazEing Race' .
The girls and their three teachers divided into 4 teams and raced between the sponsor companies meeting the engineering challenges at each site. The teams were escorted on the race by members of the Pikes Peak Section and UCCS Student Sections of Society of Women Engineers, and members of Society of American Military Engineers.
At Agilent, the girls assembled a circuit board to build an electronic game. They learned about component parts, power sources, and current flow.
At Intel, the girls toured the wafer fabrication lab, and talked to the women engineers who work there to learn about clean room environments.
At JR, the girls learned to read a plot map, and working in teams, designed their own residential neighborhood.
At Vitesse, the girls toured the chip manufacturing and QA areas and got a sample chip to take home to show what they learned about components.
The all morning event culminated with all teams enjoying a pizza lunch together back at Agilent before reboarding their school buses at the end of the race.
Comments from the girls' surveys:
“The most interesting thing I learned was all the things an engineer can do…”
“They make a lot of money and most of the girls are successful J ”
“A lot of boys! And not many girls.”
“..the rooms with the chips are 1000 times cleaner than an emergency room in a hospital.”
“..than not all engineers just design cars, they also design computer chips and neighborhoods.” |
