Author: Jorge Martinez
On April 10th, thirty-two San Jose State engineering students from Professor Venkatesh’s Materials Engineering class headed to Anne Darling Elementary in order to demonstrate their projects to over ninety elementary school students! It is never easy to host an event on a Friday afternoon, as many people are looking forward to their weekend plans, but the energy was through the roof as the SJSU students set up their projects, and as the children eagerly rushed from table to table to learn about all the cool gadgets that were on display. The hands-on activities allowed children to safely touch, grab, and play with each project, which made the learning process that much better. The SJSU students asked the kids questions in order to involve them in the project, and one student was amazed by the answers he was hearing. “The kids were full of energy and eager to learn something new. They had a lot of questions and seemed extremely excited that they could get their hands on the projects displayed. One of them said that they were going to build something that Google can’t even make, which I thought was amazing to hear from a kid that age.”
The event was set up with five different station, each with 5-6 SJSU students and 7-10 Elementary school kids from the CORAL program. The project topics ranged from magnetics to composers, polymers and much more. It was a great to see the kids excited and eager to learn at each station. The SJSU students understood how to break down the lessons of their projects in order to keep the kids engaged in the process. There is no doubt that this event has played an important educational role for the kids in terms of teaching them how engineering affects our daily lives, and how they too can reach a higher education.
Kudos to the MatE department faculty and students for bringing engineering excitement to so many K-5 students every semester.