Orientation of mechanical engineering to high school students
Professor Steve Southward and his students frequently provide tours of the Performance Engineering Research Lab (PERL) as well as tours of the Southern Virginia Vehicle Motion Lab (SoVA Motion) facility at the Virginia International Raceway. During the PERL lab tours, students see several active research projects focusing on suspension design, dynamics, and control. A state-of-the-art quarter-car test rig is popular for students to enjoy watching and learning about vehicle suspensions. At SoVA Motion, tours of the facility typically include live demonstrations of the 8-post vehicle shaker rig, shock dyno, rides on one of two driving simulators, and a collection of NASCAR race cars.
Dr. Southward has installed an internet camera in his lab, and the address and password are provided to local high school teachers for their students to observe the activities of an engineering research lab.
The most common request for outreach activities is for technical support in the form of mentoring the local robotics teams. There are at least four First Robotics teams in the local area and several Vex teams as well as First Lego League teams. When his schedule allows, Dr. Southward attends early stage design meetings to assist the high-school students with their mechanical design, software, and planning. His graduate students have provided mentoring to one of the local robotics teams for the past three years. Dr. Southward has also provided several technical programs to the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) at the Galileo high-school in Danville to promote STEM.
Dr. Southward has also made presentations to the local Piedmont Governors School students about his research program and what he and his team are trying to do in Southside Virginia. As a result of one of these presentations, he became the advisor for two Governors School students on their Senior Design project, where they worked in his lab for one semester. A new Senior Design Project concept was recently presented to the Piedmont Governors School students and the Carlisle School students to recruit four high-school students for an exciting nine-month project using SmartPhones to learn about driver behavior.
As the founder and former Director of SoVA Motion, Dr. Southward has formed a strong partnership with the Virginia International Raceway. The VIR currently has two unique programs targeting middle- and high-school students, such as Camp Motorsport (http://www.campmotorsport.com/DesktopDefault.aspx) and the Teen Driving Initiative (http://www.experiencevir.com/attractions/teen-driving.php). Dr. Southward has provided many tours and engineering demonstrations for the Camp Motorsport students. Finally, Dr. Southward hosted several local high-school math and physics teachers through the NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program who worked for him for five weeks on an internship program to learn about race cars. In this program, the teachers learned how to build and test shock absorbers, construct virtual racecar models, and they learned how the Matlab software could be used to help their own students.
Dr. Dennis Hong is often invited to visit K-12 schools to give short lectures on robotics for which hs brings robots to demonstrate. Visitors to Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) are also presented a short lecture and live robot demonstrations, interacting with the students. Dr. Hong also does public lectures with large scale robot demonstrations and showcases robots at national/international robot competitions and conferences.
Dr. Scott Huxtable hosts two under-represented high school students in his lab during the summer as part of his CAREER grant. He has also given talks, Engineering as a Profession, a talk geared toward eighth and nineth graders to encourage them to consider engineering as a college major and profession. Dr. Huxtable has also given a talk on nanotechnology to junior high students.