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ASCE Civil Engineering Club at Woodrow Wilson High School

The Civil Engineering Club at Woodrow Wilson High School has gotten off to a great start.  This past week a group of civil engineering students from UT-Arlington gave a presentation on careers in civil engineering and answered questions about college admissions, engineering classes, and college life for the high school students at WWHS.  The next couple of club meetings will feature architects from Corgan Associates and water resources engineers from Kimley-Horn and Associates and Lockwood, Andrews, & Newman.  The goal of this club is to get high school students interested and hooked on civil engineering.  Over the course of the semester, professionals from all branches of civil engineering will give presentations and lead group activities.  WWHS is a unique school in that they actually have an “Engineering Academy” where students can take classes in either civil or aerospace engineering.  In talking with the teacher at the school that leads the civil engineering classes, it has been decided that it would work best if this “club” actually occurred during the civil engineering class period.  This means that the guest speaker would be a “substitute teacher” for the day while presenting on a specific branch of civil engineering and leading a class activity. 

The club meetings occur on Wednesdays during the last period “Civil Engineering” class from 3:15-4:05pm.  There is a possibility for the club meetings to move to an after-school time slot, if there is enough interest from other students in the school.  If you or others in your office would be interested in presenting on your branch of civil engineering please let me know.   Right now I currently have a need in the following sub-disciplines of civil engineering:

• Land Development
• Construction Engineering / General Contractor (possibly arrange a site visit/field trip for us)
• Environmental
• Geotechnical / Materials Testing (perhaps we could visit your lab as a field trip?)
• Surveying

You can break up the time however you feel (e.g. 20 minutes of talking, 20 minutes of activity), however I will say that you will make a bigger impact on the students and hold their attention longer if there is more “hands on” time.  As an example, when I led the structural engineering presentation last year we gave the students gum drops, marshmallows, and spaghetti sticks and challenged the students to build an “earthquake-proof” structure.  After the students finished building, we tested their creations by placing them in a pan of jello and shaking the pan to simulate an earthquake.

Again, please let me know if you can help in any capacity or are willing to put me in contact with willing and able professionals like yourself!  You can reach me at 214-593-1139 or email me at [email protected].