April 2005, Issue #39
From the Editor
April showers brings May flowers. I don't know about your location, but here in Oregon, it's been raining everyday so I am expecting an abundance of flowers next month. Nevertheless, it's obvious that Spring is in the air. It's that wonderful time of year that makes it hard to focus because you want to be outside enjoying the day. Sound familiar?
According to the statistics, Engineers Week 2005 was a huge success. Tufts University, Massachusetts, celebrated Engineers Week by hosting the Society of Women Engineer's National Historical Traveling Exhibition "Petticoats & Slide Rules." Tufts also hosted a special event for Girl Scouts Engineering. The event was co-sponsored by SWE Boston, Tufts University, Northeastern University, Raytheon, Gillette, BAE Systems, Judith Nitsch Engineering, Kaufman Company, Rohm & Haas, Citizen Bank and the Medford Police Department. About 220 local junior girl scouts participated in badge workshops; The University of Kentucky in Lexington held its annual Engineers Week open house with games, contests, exhibits, and project demonstrations; In and around Eau Claire, Wisconsin, engineers and other technical and scientific professionals hosted Explore Engineering for two days. Students in middle and high school worked on activities, including boat- and bridge-building competitions. Students, parents, and teachers could talk with professionals; Michiana, Michigan, is the manufacturing home of the Humvee military vehicle, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers featured a talk about this widely-known vehicle at its Engineers Week dinner in nearby South Bend, Indiana; Ohio State University's College of Engineering, Microsoft, and the Junior League of Columbus hosted Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day on OU's campus. Girls heard about engineering education and careers and tried hands-on projects.
The great thing about engineering is that you can tie it to anything that is invented, designed, produced or manufactured. Your eweek activities can be about almost anything and are only limited by your imagination. If you need ideas, the Engineers Week site (www.eweek.org) has a plethora of suggestions and examples to get inspired and ready. The dates for eweek next year are February 19-25, 2006.
This month our feature is Fire Protection engineering. In case you haven't heard of Fire Protection engineers, they are the engineers that make sure you will get out of a burning building safely. They design the fire safety systems as well as develop computer modeling of the possible fire situations and innovative solutions that address the fire hazards. This can include the use of "smart" fire detectors and integrated smoke control systems, advanced fire suppression and special audible emergency communications for the occupants in the event of fire or explosion. This issue also provides several links for Fire Protection engineering exploration and our cool engineer of the month is a Fire Protection engineer.
If you know of students, educators or engineers that would be interested in this kind of information please forward this newsletter and encourage them to subscribe.
So jump aboard and let's set sail,
Celeste Baine (celbaine@engineeringedu.com)
