Engineering Week coming to Tech soon

Engineering Week coming to Tech soon

By Fahd Patel
Campus Life Staff
ATLANTA
November 13, 1998

The preliminary stages of a program designed to educate the community about the engineering profession, Engineer's Week, is underway. Engineer's Week is set to take place from February 21-27. Engineer's Week is a nationally celebrated week that coincides with George Washington's birthday, as he is considered to be the first American engineer.

"We have all the background work done," last year's co-chair Kimberly Houck said. A committee consisting of representatives, usually the presidents, of the 12 engineering societies, both professional and honor, run the program. The committee plans different activities, often targeted at high school students, to promote the engineering profession.

"I really want to get into the community because no one really knows what engineers do," remarked Brent Runyon, last year's other co-chair.

A program that was popular last year, and will be repeated this year, was the ninth grade outreach program. One hundred ninth graders came to Georgia Tech to learn about careers in engineering. These high school students attended a presentation on robotics and later built paper bridges and constructed straw towers.

Several other projects during Engineers Week will be geared at educating the community; engineering societies will present most of these projects.

The Engineers Week committee will soon take on greater responsibility. The committee will become an advisory council that will give the Deans of the College of Engineering a reliable place to draw input from students.

"It [the Committee] will serve as a way for student concerns to get to the College of Engineering," Runyon said.

He said that part of the purpose of the advisory council is to ensure that there is more collaboration between engineering societies, through the committee, after Engineer's Week.

This is the second year that this program has been at Georgia Tech. The idea came out of the President's Society.

In the future, both co-chairs hope that more engineering societies will become involved, and they stress that anyone is welcome to their meetings.

Houck and Runyon will both be graduating this year and will need to find replacements to carry the torch. Their replacements will decide on the specific activities that will take place during Engineering Week this year. For more information, see www.eweek.org

Copyright © 1998 by Gregory S. Scherrer, Editor and by the Student Publications Board

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