Education/engineering partnership benefits area students

During a recent four-week project, local middle and high school students had a chance to experience the life of an engineer.

The students, participants in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Activities League (PAL), partnered with UNC Charlotte Engineers without Borders (EWB-UNCC) students. Their collaborative project, supported through a Chancellor’s Diversity Challenge Fund grant, was led by faculty members Brett Tempest from the Lee College of Engineering and Lisa Merriweather from the College of Education. The goal was to expose the middle and high school students to math, science and engineering concepts in a fun and meaningful way that could benefit the community.

During the program, EWB-UNCC students guided PAL students in the design and implementation of a multidisciplinary engineering project at Garinger High School; they took on three different engineering challenges for the school’s Fit and Green Garden, which is part of the Friendship Garden Network that provides food for the Meals-on-Wheels program.

The students designed and installed a rainwater collection system for the roof of a shed, placed a solar panel on the shed’s roof to supply electricity to light bulbs and a pump and figured a way to pump the collected rainwater from the storage tank to another part of the garden for reuse.

“Our goal in designing the program was to link the practice of engineering with products that have a visible social benefit,” said Tempest. “If we showed the high school students that they can positively impact their communities by applying math and science skills, then we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. I think that the EWB-UNCC students were really proud to share their unique vision of how engineering can make a better world.”

The project offered students and parents — some who had no interest in or little knowledge of engineering — a first-hand look at some of the skills and competencies that are involved in engineering careers. Students and parents agreed that the project was not only a learning experience but fun and engaging – hopefully inspiring the next generation of engineers.

“My son enjoyed the program and plans to do it again. The project and program were impressive,” stated one parent.

At the end of the project, participants met at EPIC to celebrate their achievements. The PAL students presented designs and talked about their experiences during the four-week project. One parent remarked that her son was not interested in participating in the program initially, because he thought gardening was boring. After the first session, “all he could talk about was building solar panels and making things to be used in the garden.”

Tempest and Merriweather said they are encouraged by the responses of the students, parents and community partners, and they intend to seek funding from internal and external sources to further develop the program. They plan to conduct research on how service-learning can increase the interest of underrepresented youth in STEM disciplines and how science educators can integrate these types of projects into science-learning instruction.

EWB-UNCC is a campus organization comprised of engineering majors that possess a desire to give back to the communities with the greatest of needs to put their skills to work on projects that create relationships and learning experiences that go beyond anything that can be taught in a classroom.

Photo: Brett Tempest (right) gives PAL students a tour of EPIC