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Outreach Activities from First-Year Engineering Projects

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Conference

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Atlanta, Georgia

Publication Date

June 23, 2013

Start Date

June 23, 2013

End Date

June 26, 2013

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

First-Year Programs (FPD) Poster Session

Tagged Division

First-Year Programs

Page Count

16

Page Numbers

23.953.1 - 23.953.16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--22338

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/22338

Download Count

463

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Paper Authors

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Amber Kemppainen Michigan Technological University

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Amber Kemppainen is a senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering Fundamentals at Michigan Technological University. She is interested in how students learn within an online course management system. She has been active in course development and the implementation of web-based tools into courses throughout the department.

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Gretchen L. Hein Michigan Technological University

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Dr. Gretchen Hein is a senior lecturer in Engineering Fundamentals at Michigan Technological University. She teaches first-year courses and course on thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. She is interested in how students learn and how to help students learn. Her other research interests are in the areas of student persistence, persistence differences, and issues related to gender.

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Steve Haisley Patchin Center for Pre-College Outreach - Michigan Technological University

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Steve Patchin is currently the director of the Center for Pre-College Outreach at Michigan Technological University. From 2003 to 2008 he was an educator/coach of Mathematics/Social Science with Dollar Bay Tamarack City Schools.
Patchin received his B.S. in Business Administration from Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich. He also earned his B.S. in Business Administration with a minor in Finance and a B.S. in Social Sciences with a minor in Mathematics from there. In 2003, he earned his State of Michigan Teaching Certification in Secondary Education. In 2007, Patchin received his Master's in Educational Leadership from the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH. He expects a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb. in 2015.

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Kimberly D'Augustino

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Cody J Kangas Michigan Technological University

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Abstract

Outreach Activities from First-Year Engineering ProjectsIn April 2012, the XXXXXXX group from our University attended the 2nd U.S. Science andEngineering Festival in Washington D.C. XXXXX is an outreach organization that focuses onmaking STEM accessible to all age groups through action-packed hands-on learning. Thislearning often takes place in short 1-2 minute demonstrations or activities. One of these activitieswas modified from a first-year engineering project on wind energy as part of the _____ Project(DUE- ####).For the semester project, student teams developed a bench-scale wind turbine. They measuredthe turbine performance by measuring the RPMs, torque, and wind velocity. They used Excel toanalyze their team and class data. The project was modified for XXXXXXX. In this adaptation,six turbine blades consisting of three different geometries (triangular sail, rectangular, and oval)were constructed. Participants selected the number and type of blades to insert into a KidWindhub. The KidWind hub was attached to a generator and pre-fabricated turbine stand. Studentswere able to adjust the blades they chose and blade pitch in order to maximize the voltageproduced.This paper focuses on this adaptation of a first-year engineering project to K-12 outreach. Itoutlines the adaptation process from a semester-long project to a 1-2 minute learning experience.As the need for STEM outreach continues and grows, the need for new and unique activities alsoincreases. The adaptation of existing work is one way to increase the number of activitiesavailable. Also, the adaptation of university-level projects to these outreach programs issignificant because it begins to show participants what STEM students do and accomplish withinthe university environment.

Kemppainen, A., & Hein, G. L., & Patchin, S. H., & D'Augustino, K., & Kangas, C. J. (2013, June), Outreach Activities from First-Year Engineering Projects Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--22338

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2013 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015