With foam boards and straws, Jefferson High School students Claire Conover and Josh Roberts put their engineering skills to the test Tuesday while trying to erect a building-like structure held together with mailing tape.
Hunkered over tables at SSOE’s Toledo headquarters, the teens raced the clock against the constraints of the engineering challenge, as well as against other students from their Monroe school and those from Jefferson and Swanton high schools.
Looking on, SSOE structural engineer Kyle Blosser watched the successes and failures of students at each table, offering bits of encouragement and tips whenever possible.
The 2016 University of Toledo graduate recalls similar introductions to engineering when he was in high school, but Tuesday’s visit as part of the SSOE “Engineer for a Day” program provides a larger insight to the tasks he faces in his career.
“It’s fun because you don’t know what [students] are going to come up with and that's kind of how it works too for my job,” Mr. Blosser said. “They’ll be like, ‘We need a platform or this or this and here’s your timetable,’ and I have no starting point.
After a time, the students’ structures are assessed to see if they can stand firm after a water bottle is placed on top. If they remain upright, the structures are then given an earthquake test whether they remain standing with a shake of the table.
One by one, the structures fell at each table after a water bottle was placed on top. The structure by Ms. Conover, 18, the young Roberts, 17, and their tablemates was the only one to hold firm with as many as four bottles on top. But it didn’t fully survive a gentle earthquake test — shifting and leaving to one side, although it didn’t fully fall over either.
“It feels good, especially knowing that we didn't have a full collapse situation,” said Ms. Conover, a senior. “If it were a building, we wouldn't have that many deaths from the inside.”
For the next couple of hours, students learned about 2D and 3D drawings as well about electrical engineering. They then applied what they learned by building a motor using tools such as a battery, magnet, copper wire, rubber band, and a paper clip.
John Colley, SSOE’s senior electrical engineer, said the challenge wasn’t to think outside the box so much as follow instructions. Working with them were other electrical, chemical, and mechanical engineers, so students could meet and ask them questions — about the challenge, as well as about their jobs and what they do.
Vince DiPofi is CEO of SSOE, an internationally known architecture and engineering firm in Toledo. The company has been playing host to such events for high schoolers for more than 15 years as part of National Engineering Week, which runs the third week of February, he said. The goal is to increase teens’ understanding of engineering careers and spark their interest, he said.
Engineers continue to be in high demand, as well. He said SSOE has about 200 unfilled positions across the country, including in Toledo. As it stands, enough incoming engineers are not available to replace those retiring in the field, much less hire to fulfill needs from the growing electric car field and other markets.
So inspiring as many students as possible to enter the field will only benefit the future, Mr. DiPofi said.
“But mostly, I want them to be excited and feel like, ‘Hey, this is a career that I could have fun at and also have an impact on the world,” Mr. DiPofi said. “We want them to consider studying engineering and building it as a career because there’s so much more opportunity right now in engineering, and it’s just exploding with jobs.”
First Published February 21, 2023, 10:29 p.m.