Outreach to Area High School Students Highlights Engineers Week

Forty young women and men from area high schools will learn more about careers in engineering during an overnight stay at the University of Rochester this week as part of National Engineers Week.

Students from Monroe and Livingston counties, including Edison Tech, Greece Athena, Fairport, Dansville and Geneseo, will attend sample engineering classes, share experiences with college students, and speak with men and women who are professional engineers in local firms on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 21 and 22. A highlight of the visit will be two hours of demonstrations on holography, lasers, virtual reality, a balsa wood "tower of power," and other topics.

"We want the students to see the variety there is in engineering, and to break the stereotypes they may have of who engineers are and what they do," says Sheryl Gracewski, associate professor of mechanical engineering. Gracewski herself attended a similar program while in high school and ultimately chose to pursue engineering as a profession.

Other Engineers Week activities include an egg toss and an egg smash contest, a volleyball tournament, and a scavenger hunt.

The events are sponsored by the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and its student societies, including Society of Women Engineers, Tau Beta Pi, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers, Optical Society of America, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. tr