Manufacturing Engineering Excitement Workshops
Background
Cal Poly's Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering received $5,000 from the Society of Manufacturing Engineering to conduct Manufacturing Engineering Excitement workshops for female and minority Junior High School and High School students. Manufacturing Engineering continues to experience a recognition problem among high school students in general, and female students in particular. Four 1-day workshops were offered (February - May 1995) to students from local schools to gain that recognition - and generate interest in Manufacturing Engineering as a career.
The SME grant was used to provide transportation, lunch to the participants, and procure all materials needed within the context of the grant. Matching institutional funds were used in the form of faculty support to organize and offer these workshops. The following is a list of Cal Poly professors who contributed to these workshops:
Sema Alptekin - Kenneth Brown
- Archie Cheda
- Mark Cooper
- Unny Menon
These workshops were designed to capitalize on the students' natural interest in using consumer electronic products, by letting them actually make a simple product that works when they are done at the end of the day, and that they can share with their classmates to create an enhanced image of manufacturing among the high school students.
They were designed to allow these students to experience, in a hands-on way, the entire electronics product manufacturing sequence -- from CAD schematic capture through completion of a working electronic product. Junior-high and high school students designed and built a circuit board circuit board which has electronic components and eight LEDs that turn on and off in a sequence and runs on a battery. They were given tours of our Manufacturing Engineering Facilities followed by pizza parties on campus and free SME Student Club shirts.
Represented Schools
The following is a list of schools that were represented in the workshops:
- San Luis Obispo High School
- San Luis Obispo High School
- Santa Maria High School
- El Camino Junior High, and
- Laguna Middle School
IME Students
The workshops were run by a select group of students from the Manufacturing Engineering program of the IME Department. The following students participated in the offerings of these workshops:
- Ben Stedman
- Maria Martinez
- James Reed
- Sandi Twist
- Michael Jyumonji
- Dorothy Lush
- Neil Cortez
- Basilio Martinez
- Alma Mariscal
Conclusion
The workshops were a great success. "I liked everything that we did because I never thought that I would be able to do something like this", "I really enjoy being here working for the first time with microchips", "I would like to attend again to another workshop like this" are some of the comments from the participants.
Organizing and offering these workshops was a lot of work for everyone who was involved. The satisfaction of doing something useful for young students was worth the trouble. We believe that we were able to stimulate their interest in Manufacturing Engineering since many of the participants of these workshops want to come back to Cal Poly for another workshop. We are looking forward to having them enrolled in our new Manufacturing Engineering program in the coming years.
