Youths experience engineering first-hand at GVSU

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A group of 10 high school students from around West Michigan will get to experience firsthand some of the more gee-whiz parts of studying engineering when they visit Grand Valley's School of Engineering on Tuesday, February 16.

The event is sponsored by Grand Valley’s School of Engineering’s research and development consulting clearinghouse: the DOER (Design, Optimization, Evaluation and Redesign) Center. The DOER Center takes on projects and matches them with engineering faculty members and students who have the proper expertise to work on them.  For more information about the DOER Center, visit www.gvsu.edu/doer

Students will tour the John C. Kennedy Hall of Engineering and Keller Engineering Laboratories buildings. They will get to see a "clean room" with state-of-the-art atomic force microscope. They will also tackle a design problem in a group environment with Grand Valley students and present their results at the end of the day. The student teams will be tasked with finding the ideal length and shape of a Styrofoam bullet to achieve the maximum distance from an air-powered launcher.

"This event is organized to inspire talented students to pursue career in engineering and science," said DOER Center assistant director Shabbir A. Choudhuri. "The day will provide them opportunity to look closely into an engineering student’s life, mingle with professional engineers, work on a simple design problem, and present their findings through a formal presentation. We hope the event will encourage the students to use their math and science skills in their future pursuit of knowledge and professional development."

MEDIA ADVISORY: The event culminates with presentations from 2-3 p.m., when the groups present their work. This session is open to media coverage. For more information, contact Shabbir Choudhuri at (616) 331-6845 or [email protected].