Students from ten middle schools gathered to spend a day with the Engineering Ambassadors

Over one hundred students from surrounding middle schools gathered at North Allegheny Baierl Center to spend a day with the Penn State Engineering Ambassadors. We kicked the day off with a presentation on career opportunities within engineering, highlighting the unique opportunities awaiting future engineers. The students then broken into teams to experience some hands-on activities. A unique opportunity, this day was set up so that students participated in all three of our activities, prosthetic device design, Rube Goldberg challenge, and squishy circuits!

After the amazing success we had with the designing a prosthetic limb activity we recently debuted at The Mount, Taylor Puskar and Julia Meyer added some new flare to the activity by adding new building materials to the design kit. With these additional materials we saw students come up with some very innovative and creative prosthetic limbs!

A favorite for our middle school students, Mike Coia and Christine Hidebrand explained simple machines and challenged students to create a 5+ step Rube Goldberg machine.  Marbles were flying, dominoes were tumbling, and students were using the build then test strategy to great success. The results were outstanding, with some teams completing 10+ steps before successfully capturing their pig!










If building an innovative prosthetic limb, and an intricate Rube Goldberg weren't enough, students learned how circuits work and then created their own during the squishy circuits activity. Students learned the difference between setting up parallel and series circuits, then were challenged to create the most creative circuit they could come up with. One team even created a monster with two LED eyes and a mean growl created by a buzzer buried deep within its body.

In all it was a fun-filled day of engineering spent with talented and creative students. We're already looking forward to coming back next year!

The fall semester wouldn't be complete without a visit to The Mount!

Today we made our third visit to The Mount St Joseph's Academy, always a favorite visit for the EAs. We had a full day visiting several physics and biology classes. Our EAs facilitated a wide array of in-class activities, from tissue engineering to squishy circuits, to learning about the red bull space jump and designing their own parachutes.

It wasn't just the extraordinary hands-on activities that made this day so great, it was also the amazing team of EAs. What made this visit even better than a year before? We had TWO new hands-on activities that were developed by our EAs specifically for this trip. Terri Creech and Lola Buonoma developed a tissue engineering presentation for the Honors and AP biology classes along with an activity to have students design their own medical device out of common household items, and then use this device to dissect a marble from a cup of water. It was a challenging design problem, yet the ladies took it on with energy and enthusiasm. Terri and Lola also ran the Rube Goldberg activity for a couple physics classes, which is always a  great success!

The second new activity of the day was a design of a prosthetic limb activity developed by Abby Krieder and Kathleen Prilutski. Using toilet plungers, sponges, bubble wrap, duct tape and rope, students were given the task of designing a prosthetic limb. From the images below, you can see this was activity was a great success. Students design their limb for a specific type of shoe, and some even dared to try them on!







In addition to all the Bio Activities, the physics classes learned about the engineering behind the recent red bull space jump. Students then designed, built and tested their own parachutes! Amy Szabo and Arielle Green were great design advisers and they even held a challenge for the team with the safest parachute by testing them to see which parachute took the longest amount of time to land.

With over 5 different activities being run throughout the day, we were kept on our toes, but one thing that did not surprise us was the talent and creativity we saw from the ladies at The Mount.

The Ellis School receives a visit from the Engineering Ambassadors

Today the Engineering Ambassadors made their first visit to the Ellis School. We saw students from 5th to 12th grade, and despite the age difference one thing all the students had in common was their enthusiasm for learning, their inquisitive minds, and ample creativity. We kicked the day off with a large assembly to all the students, 5th-12th grade. Its not typical to give a middle and high school presentation at the same time, but our EAs took on the challenge and were greeted by great interest and an overflow of questions from students from every grade. It was such a welcoming start to our day at the Ellis School.

Throughout the day, we had three teams of EAs presenting various hands-on activities to science and math classes. Terri Creech and Dana Goldblum ran the Oil spill activity in 6th and 8th grade science classes, showing students environmental impact is an important consideration in engineering.

Kacie Long and Hannah Seeger showed off lasers to AP Physics and AP Chemistry classes then took a break to help the 5th graders design roller coasters. The fifth graders won the day for enthusiasm, energy, and a will to make it work!

Sarah Krisher and Kathleen Prilutski focused on the biology classes creating a new presentation on Biomimicry and enhancing it with clips from popular TED talks. The students were awed by the ways in which nature inspires design.

It was a day full of curiosity, learning, and inspiration for the future generation of engineers at The Ellis School!