Photo by Ping Guan
LEAD students participate in a fireside chat with Jocelyn Scott.
Photo by Ping Guan
LEAD students make a presentation in the Rotunda
A program that for 25 years has worked to attract a greater diversity of students to business careers came to the University of Virginia's Engineering School this summer to do the same for engineering and science.
U.Va. held its first Leadership, Education and Development — or LEAD — Summer Engineering Institute, hosted by the U.Va. School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Center for Diversity in Engineering.
LEAD was established in 1980 by executives at McNeil Pharmaceutical to provide a positive career-related experience to students of color. Traditionally, LEAD consisted only of a Business Institute that was held at several of America's most prominent graduate business schools, including U.Va.’s Darden School of Business.
Last year, LEAD created a Summer Engineering Institute, an interactive three-week program involving students at the University of California at Berkeley and Georgia Tech. This year, the U.Va. Engineering School and University of Michigan College of Engineering joined the program.
“Based on what we had learned about the strength of the LEAD program in business, we were excited to get involved with their engineering program,” said Carolyn Vallas, director of the Center for Diversity in Engineering. “This program will greatly help us to attract younger generations to study engineering and science, and eventually pursue related careers.”
During June, 30 rising high school juniors and seniors from across the nation gathered in Charlottesville for the three-week residency. The curriculum was designed to familiarize students with various engineering disciplines through classroom study, group projects, guest speakers and hands-on experiments.
Lisa Colosi, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, designed a project to teach LEAD participants not only how to measure phosphorous contamination in water, but also how to develop marketable technologies for reducing its impact on water systems. The students’ hands-on experiences included using different methods for analyzing samples from Dell Pond on U.Va.’s Grounds. By the end of the program, they were presenting plans for addressing phosphorous pollution in specific waterways in Latin America and Mississippi.
“We often bemoan the lack of U.S. students pursuing engineering and science educations,” Colosi said. “Anything we can do to get kids fired up and interested in engineering is time well-spent. The LEAD program is an ideal way to introduce these students to engineering. ”
This summer’s program drew on the expertise of a wide range of engineering and science professors. It offered students a diverse sampling of various engineering specialties and allowed young faculty members a chance to work with a group of high school students who are underrepresented in engineering and science.
Steven McIntosh, an assistant professor in the Department
of Chemical Engineering, was impressed with the students’ eagerness to learn
new concepts. He worked with the students on experiments that compared
the process required to produce ethanol from corn with the process that
uses the plant’s cellulose stalks as the feedstock.
“These were some of the most enthusiastic students I’ve
worked with,” McIntosh said. “Whenever we finished the day’s
experiments early, they would want to do more or spend time at the whiteboard
asking more questions about our energy supply, existing technology and
future possibilities.”
Jeffrey Saucerman, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, worked with students on project that used computer modeling to investigate complex biochemical networks regulating cardiac hypertrophy; a form of abnormal heart muscle growth that often leads to heart failure. Students learned computer modeling by simulating the social dynamics of their own friend network, and then built a model of heart cells.
“I was really inspired by the inquisitiveness and creativity of these students,” Saucerman said. “They rapidly picked up new engineering approaches and discovered that a MEK inhibitor may be a good therapy for reversing hypertrophy. While they didn’t know it at the time, it turns out that this target is being actively pursued by the pharmaceutical industry.”
In one workshop, students learned how to successfully develop and deliver PowerPoint presentations from Barry Hinton, a cell biology professor in the U.Va. School of Medicine. Hinton usually teaches his workshop through the University's Teaching Research Center to School of Medicine professionals who have a good deal of presentation experience.
“I showed the students how to give a presentation in a very different way than people would normally give a PowerPoint presentation,” Hinton said. “I emphasized the benefits of using images instead of text plus other methods that can inject some life, creativity and innovation into their presentations.”
Students were given the opportunity to apply these new strategies in research symposium presentations given on the last day of the program. In small groups, the students presented their research on a variety of engineering topics, including producing ethanol from cellulose, using aluminum sulfate for water purification and applying computer modeling and simulation technology to human biological systems.
“I was very impressed with the research presentations the students gave,” Hinton said. “They really seemed to absorb the information from the workshop and apply it in a very fantastic and inspiring way.”
The program also included a “fireside chat” with Jocelyn E. Scott, chief engineer and vice president of DuPont Engineering, Facilities and Real Estate, who talked to the students about her personal journey into engineering. Scott's background includes chemical engineering degrees from Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a 25-year career at DuPont.
Scott centered the discussion on the kinds of actions and decisions the students should focus on at this point in their lives.
“It will be very important for them going forward to have a high degree of self-awareness and the self-discipline required to take full control of their decisions,” Scott said. “I tried to help them discover and establish their own kind of philosophy that will help guide them through life.”
Many industry experts and political leaders agree that developing technical knowledge and abilities in today's youth is critical to the nation's future health, security and economy.
“Programs like LEAD help those students who feel they have an interest in engineering follow through with those feelings,” Scott said. “These programs encourage them to overcome the academic challenges and expose them to the opportunities associated with an engineering career early on.
“Additionally, allowing these students to be in an environment where they are surrounded by other like-minded peers, who are all thinking about engineering and perform well academically, provides encouragement.”
The exciting activities, the exposure to innovative engineering and the supportive environment contributed to the positive encouragement that the students took with them when they finished the three-week program.
“I learned a lot about what it means to be an engineer and met a lot of very interesting people,” said Alex Ortiz, a rising high school senior from Houston. “The whole experience made me fall in love with the program and allowed me to decide that I want to be a biomedical engineer.”
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