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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 is rolling along!  Last month, water resources engineers from Kimley-Horn and Associates and Lockwood, Andrews, & Newman presented to the students and led some great group activities. One of the weeks, students were challenged to create a water distribution system using different size hoses, straws, tubes, and connectors to fill two “reservoirs” that were at different elevations and different distances from the main “water source”. The goal of this club is to get high school students interested and hooked on civil engineering.  Over the course of the school year, 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.

Dallas ISD STEM Day:
ASCE Dallas is looking for volunteers on February 1^st, 2014 for the Inaugural Dallas ISD STEM Day at Skyline High School.  ASCE Dallas has committed to bringing about 20 volunteers to represent our great organization at this event.  ASCE will provide you with promotional materials and give-a-ways, we just need you to be there!

ASCE Dallas at The Hockaday School:

ASCE Dallas has established a new relationship with The Hockaday School to give monthly presentations to their Engineering Club.  Kimley-Horn and Associates and L.A. Fuess Partners are currently on the schedule to present on water resources and structural engineering, respectfully.  Please let us know if you or your company would be interested in presenting at one of these monthly meetings.

If you would like to volunteer for any or all of these events or if you are willing to put us in contact with other willing and able professionals such as yourself, please contact Jonathan Brower at [email protected] or via phone (214-593-1139).