Students working on their projects.

Back in December, STEMian bloggers read about this year’s Freshman Engineering class and the amazing projects that taught them the basics of engineering. This semester, the first-year engineers took all of their knowledge and combined it into one project that reached out into the community. The first-year engineers were divided into groups of three to five to make a project for Oh Wow! The Roger and Gloria Jones Children’s Center. The project was to make an exhibit for Oh Wow! that demonstrates an aspect of engineering. Students also had to use aspects of the computer programming, or MATLAB.

An Oh Wow! project on display in Moser's atrium.

Working on a budget and a theme, the students then needed to plan a fun, original project that supported one of Oh Wow!’s core principles—avionics, brain POWER, early childhood, earth & weather, engineering, River of Knowledge, and sound and light. The project must have also had to apply their technical writing and oral communication skills as part of the presentation of projects. Out of the fifty projects, Oh Wow! chose the Laser Maze as the overall winner. Also chosen to be featured at the museum were Transmission, Dino Dig, Air Cannon, and Electromagnetism. “[The] students exceeded my expectations, they did a phenomenal job,” Dr. Kerry Meyers, First-Year Engineering Coordinator, said.