Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) chapter hosts Cal Poly Tour Day

May 1, 2015

The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) chapter hosted a Cal Poly Tour Day for their SHPE Jr. chapter from Pioneer Valley High School on May 1st. The high school students had the opportunity to tour various engineering departments and participate in three lab activities. One of the activities was the K'Nex activity led by ARCE student Carla Simental. The ARCE department provided the use of one of the labs and the K'Nex for students to learn more about Structural Engineering. In this lab activity, the students were introduced to traditional bridge designs and basic statics concepts. They were then tasked with building a bridge to withstand the greatest amount of load. The students were shown how the load would be applied to their bridge and were encouraged to design their bridge to effectively accommodate the loading system. At the end of the activity, the volunteer leaders had a discussion with the students as they communicated what worked, what didn't work, and what could be improved in future designs. This allowed the students to learn about and follow the engineering design process in the lab activity. Many students were very interested with Structural Engineering and indicated to SHPE volunteers that they looked forward to applying to the Cal Poly program.