 |
Engineering Program a Reality
By Kunjoo Park, courtesy of Kent News |
For many years, Kent has been giving scholarships to its students and faculty so that they can participate in summer engineering programs. Kent School is currently endorsing many pre-engineering programs to help broaden opportunities for students who are interested in this field. Kent’s Pre-Engineering program aims to introduce students to various subjects and practices and to give them chances to participate in general engineering.
One of the pre-engineering programs already in place is the Robotics Team, led by Mr. Austin. Currently, the team consists of 23 members and is growing. Many members participated in programs outside of Kent School during this past summer. Michelle Park ’11 went to Brown University this past summer and learned specifically about Alternative Energy Engineering, which covers topics from new car fuel to global warming. The camp examined the limitations of alternative fuels and how new technology could generate these alternative energy sources efficiently to practically integrate them into daily life. Gabriel Watson ’10 spent two weeks in a summer camp at Union College. Through Kent’s Wentz Engineering Fund, Kent was able to award her financial assistance in order to participate in the camp. During the twelve days that she was there, Watson designed a toy for children with disabilities, incorporating both motors and circuits. The Union College Camp is unique in that only females were admitted, in order to pave the road for the future female engineers. “During my time there, I was able to meet female engineers, some were some who worked as technicians, teachers, managers and retirees who shared their experiences and gave advice about what to expect as a woman engineer,” says Watson of her experience at the program.
This year, Kent has entered a national challenge, hosted by the Junior Engineering Technical Society. This challenge between schools across the country is to design a machine to help a handicapped person. Sonia Yao’06 explains, “We are going to find someone who needs assistance and attempt to make an assisting device for him or her.” In entering the contest, our JETS team hopes to extend engineering into the community. In preparation for building and designing, the team hopes to accumulate more members who are interested in robotics, engineering, filming or drawing.
To further increase the knowledge of our pre-engineering program, Kent hosted guest speaker Mr. H. Vincent Poor. Mr. Poor is the Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. “I applaud you and your colleagues for establishing [the engineering team]” said Poor, complimenting Kent School for providing such a variety of opportunities. Poor is a great advocate of engineering, a man who, like other Deans of Engineering at other universities, sees much potential for engineering in the 21st Century.
The goal of the pre-engineering program is to foster academic advancement of Kent students and ultimately to encourage them to pursue engineering careers that will benefit all humankind, and it appears that we are off to a great start.
|
Robotics at KENTBy Timothy Ensign, courtesy of Kent New |
This year marks the second year that Kent has had a robotics team. It was founded last year by Mr. Austin, a teacher in the mathematics department, who participated in a school robotics team himself. The team functions in the winter term, with the goal of participating in a robotics competition in March. There are over forty regional competitions held around the world in March, each of which releases a set of instructions, which change from year to year, to high school teams worldwide. The Hofstra contest puts an emphasis on intelligent planning and designs, and every challenge requires a measure of skill and performance from both the robot and its human controllers. This year’s competition is perhaps one of the more challenging to date, with independent high school teams working together to create robots that will kick soccer balls over boundaries and into goals across an immense and clustered playing field.
But the point of the competition is not the prize or the performance of the robot, at least not to Mr. Austin: “My goals for this program for its entire life are for students to have an experience where they’re building together, working together, and trying things that don’t always work. This is a learning experience. I couldn’t care less if our robot doesn’t score a point.” Mr. Austin and the rest of the team, though, are hard at work building prototypes and testing which methods work the best in their soccer ball-kicking robot.
The team itself is strong this year, as Mr. Austin says, with “twice as many kids this year as last.” According to Mr. Austin, the robotics team is, “today, about a month ahead of where we were last year,” citing the experience developed and retained as well as the accumulation of tools and parts needed to construct the robot. They work diligently for several hours per day Monday through Saturday on the fourth floor of school house in the burgeoning engineering lab.
The team could always use some help – theirs is a limited team of dedicated core members. There is a much larger group of people who participate on the team as a secondary activity, but on a limited-time basis. Kent’s robotics team competes with teams composed of dozens and hundreds of members, many with years more experience. Mr. Austin always appreciates any assistance he can get; if you feel like helping out with their task, come by on a Wednesday between two and five or a Saturday between one and five, or contact Mr. Austin to be put on their mailing list.
Click here for more information on the Pre-Engineering Program
