Manhattan College Engineers meet with local middle school students.
@MANHATTAN.EDU/COURTESY
By Andrew Mannion, Asst. Sports Editor
Manhattan College’s STEM outreach event focused on reaching out to local communities and schools to provide opportunities for students to learn some of the basics of engineering.
The engineering societies at MC did a multitude of demonstrations at local schools, churches and other gathering places.
One of the hosts of the event, Velbeth Cifuentes, described the work that the societies do and how it benefits students in the area.
“Our mission is to bring engineering fundamentals to minority groups, whether that’s teaching middle school or high school students, the basic concepts of engineering and kind of introducing to them the field,” Velbeth said. “A lot of these places and schools that have a high percentage of minority students, they don’t get the ability to get well informed on the different kinds of jobs that they can do in the field.”
By showing them different uses for engineering, students can find their own interests within the field.
Mechanical engineering student Brody Sims stated how he gained a passion for engineering from his interests at a young age.
“In elementary and middle school, my interest [in engineering] had to do with my passion in cars that I have had ever since I was young,” Sims said. “Anything from sports cars to your everyday drivers that you’d find on the road. It always took a fascination with me. I’ve always wanted to be able to build and design them. That’s why I chose engineering as my major here at Manhattan College.”
The event focused on showing young students different examples of engineering and how it impacts the world. The societies demonstrated different things such as making drawbridges and seeing how much weight they can hold. Cifuentes talks about some of the work she has done within those classrooms.
“We did three projects with them,” Cifuentes said. “We did a DNA strawberry extraction to kind of replicate like what you could be doing in the chemical engineering field. And then lastly, we taught them how to build Rock, Paper, Scissors using Python coding. So really basic stuff, but they were able to just type the code themselves, test it out, see how it would have come up.”
Having this event for local schools is one way to immerse students into the engineering field early in their education experience.
Another engineering student, JJ Lotardo, remarked on the importance of familiarizing kids with engineering topics early, especially with the current shortage of engineers.
“I think the STEM program at MC is great,” Lotardo said. “You know, there’s a shortage of engineers nowadays. So the more the merrier with students or people that become engineers and when you start younger you get more experience. So that means it is just easier for you to find a job or for you to work in the field. I think it’s a great impact and a great program all around.”
The event is looking to expand into a full program in the future with more opportunities to help local communities. For the time being, they plan to continue the great work that they are doing within the communities they positively impact.