Mentoring Future Engineers
Every year the local school district my daughter goes to holds a STEAM night. STEAM is the acronym marking the incorporation of arts into the traditional STEM program. Due to the pandemic, this year was the first in-person STEAM event since 2020 and was being held at McLure Middle School in Western Springs. Working in the engineering industry, I often volunteer and tutor young girls and boys in all STEAM topics. Working with K-12, especially elementary and middle-aged school kids, has been a big part of my passion. I truly believe getting students excited about STEAM as early as possible is key in having them more comfortable in the engineering space among their peers.
The timing of this year’s event was perfect. It was scheduled just a few days before National Engineers Week (2/20-2/25). Founded in 1951, EWeek is dedicated to celebrating and raising awareness of the work that engineers do as well as promoting engineering as a positive career pursuit to students, parents, and teachers. This year’s EWeek theme is “Creating the Future”, which also applies to mentoring future engineers.
I decided to focus on Indoor Air Quality for my presentation. Cyclone Energy Group generously lent me a complete sensor station set up for the event, a light meter, a thermal gun, and a bunch of safety vests and hard hats.
The night started slow because we had two rooms filled with fun dry ice and slime. Who can compete with slime?! Even my junior assistant for the day ditched me at a point to run to the slime room. Once the novelty wore off a bit, the students started flocking to the room for my demonstration. They ranged in age from K-8th grade.
I began by showing them the sensor station and explaining the equipment. The following were the attributes monitored: Temperature, humidity, PM 2.5,10, Ozone, CO, CO2, Formaldehyde, and the topic of the event VOC.
We discussed what VOC were, how they can impact our health and what kind of diseases prolonged exposure could cause. The kids experimented with using hand sanitizer near the sensors and noticing how the VOC levels rose. The temperature inside was over 78 degrees F. I had the window open and talked to the students about the importance of ventilation to dilute the pollutants in the air. They were able to notice the temp, CO2, and the VOC drop. I did point out that the sensor doesn’t understand why it is going up only that something is triggering it. For example, if you were peeling an orange near the sensor, that will trigger a temporary elevated level. https://cyclone.energy/2021/04/21/csi-my-air/
We talked about the building envelope and played around with an infrared camera and a thermal gun to try and detect hot and cold surfaces in the room. The camera was the star of the show as most kids have never seen that. The idea of seeing something through the screen that our eyes don’t see was fascinating to them.
Using a light meter, they had fun checking out and reading the Lux levels at different surfaces. They were very curious and had so many questions about our indoor environmental quality. They were intrigued by the fact that things we can’t see can impact how we feel and were also surprised that we spend more than 93% of our time indoors. At some stage the room got crowded and I was not keeping up with all the children and the equipment. My daughter Leila stepped in, and she was able to repeat what I was saying to all the children that were lined up by the sensors. I was very proud to see how she demonstrated the hand sanitizer experiment near the VOC sensor and explained the results on the computer dashboard.
Overall, it was a successful event. The kids had fun with the equipment and got to dress up in safety vests and hard hats. The parents learned a couple of new things and looked proud of their young engineers in the making. Research conducted by Global Strategy Group in May and October of 2022 revealed that a student’s interest in engineering as a career choice grows substantially with direct exposure to an adult who works in the engineering field. It’s my hope that by volunteering at the local STEAM event, I may have influenced at least a couple future engineers.
