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Education Outreach Volunteering Opportunities

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.  We then had architects from Corgan Associates come and talk about how architects are using BIM programs like Revit to coordinate with engineers.  The next couple of club meetings will feature 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 us know. Right now there is 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, there is potential for a larger impact on the students if there is more “hands on” time.  For 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 us know if you can help in any capacity or are willing to put us in contact with willing and able professionals like yourself!  Contact Jonathan Brower at 214-593-1139 or via email at [email protected].

Joseph J. Rhoads Career Awareness Day – Speaker Request

Guest speakers are needed for the Career Awareness Day at the Rhoads Learning Center on Friday, November 15^th.  The goal of this day is to expose students to the countless career opportunities that are available to them and how education will provide that road to success.  More specifically, this is a great opportunity for students to learn about civil engineering and what we do on a daily basis. The Rhoads Center is asking that presenters be available from 9am to 12pm to speak to 20 to 30 students at a time during four separate sessions.  Breakfast and lunch will be provided. Please contact Jonathan Brower via phone (214-593-1139) or via email ([email protected]) if you are interested in helping out at all.

Mark your calendars for February 1^st, 2014 for the Inaugural Dallas ISD STEM Day at Skyline High School. ASCE Dallas will be looking for about 20 volunteers in the near feature to represent our great organization at this event. More info to come later, but if you want to put your name down early for volunteering, contact Jonathan Brower at 214-593-1139 or via email [email protected].