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Parks College Celebrates National Engineers Week

Saint Louis University's Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology celebrated National Engineers Week, or "E-Week" as it is commonly known among students and faculty, with a variety of projects, activities Feb. 19 to 25.

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Guest judges from the American Society of Civil Engineers' Louis chapter measure the bridges and judge aesthetic appeal at the Billiken BEAMS competition.

E-Week kicked off with free breakfast on Monday, where Parks College students, faculty and staff had to catch the pancakes being flipped through the McDonnell Douglas Hall Rotunda by Chris Cakes of St. Louis.

Parks College also hosted two "Introduce a Girl to Engineering” events on Tuesday and Thursday. During those two events combined, more than 130 female high school students from several area high schools spent the day exploring Parks' engineering labs, learning about various engineering disciplines and participating in an innovation challenge.

Among the events that day was a keynote address from Michelle Sabick, Ph.D., dean of Parks College and professor of biomedical engineering. She shared stories about her path to engineering, discussed her passion for her work as well as challenges she has overcome and encouraged the students to pursue careers in STEM fields.

Current engineering students from the Engineering and Innovation Learning Community, Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the Rocket Propulsion Lab, ITS and a few independent individuals, volunteered at the events as lab guides and challenge leaders to share their experiences as engineers with the visiting students.

Floyd Welsh from Career Services also spent a couple hours on Tuesday in McDonnell Douglas Hall to provide an opportunity for Parks College students to drop in for quick questions to help them prepare for the upcoming university-wide career fair. Welsh worked with several students on tweaking their resumes, practicing their professional pitch and giving networking tips.  Several engineering employers were present at the career fair to connect with Parks College students.

On Wednesday, 120 students from across SLU’s campus competed in a special Engineers Week Innovation Challenge that offered a larger prize than usual, sponsored by Boeing, the Parks College Dean’s Office and the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. Students were challenged to create a product inspired by an article from the Newslink archives and pitch their new product to a panel of judges in 60 seconds. John Pasquesi, Luke Taylor, Scott Lambert, Nicole Redden, Carter Franz, and Troy Lensing won the challenge with their product, Solar Blinds, and their team was awarded $1,000!

 Thursday’s E-Week activities focused engineering, innovation and entrepreneurship. Student leaders of the Monthly Innovation Challenge hosted a tabletop innovation challenge at Billicon Valley in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business. In the challenge, teams built bridges out of two pieces of cardstock and some masking tape to span a “river” of 8.5 inches; the team whose bridge held the most amount of weight before breaking or touching the “water” won.

Parks College also held a breakout session at Venture Café on Thursday, which is a weekly gathering for the innovation and entrepreneurial community in St. Louis held at the CIC 4240 in the Cortex District. Dean Sabick moderated a panel on the topic of “Engineering Innovative Solutions to Global Problems,” which examined how engineers can impact societal problems through innovation. Three current Parks College students spoke on the panel about the projects they are currently working on that will have positive impacts on local and global communities. Those students were Amber Wolf, who discussed her group’s senior design project, “Fight the Bite,” where they are creating a cost effective electrospun mosquito trap for developing countries suffering from malaria and other vector borne diseases; Marissa Carletta, president of SLU’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders, who shared about their clean water projects in Bolivia and Kenya; and Paul Richard, who represented the Engineering Health Collaborative, which works to provide hands-on learning experiences to develop student leaders who are equipped to improve global health through engineering.

To further celebrate E-Week, Parks College staff held the annual Freebie Friday event, handing out a new style of free Parks College t-shirts to students, staff and faculty.

On Saturday, Parks College and SLU's American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) chapter hosted the seventh annual Billiken BEAMS (Building Engineering Awareness in Metro St. Louis) competition on SLU's campus.

Beginning in November, high school students formed small groups to design and build a bridge out of balsa wood, following certain design specifications.  During E-Week, the teams compete against other groups throughout the St. Louis area, testing their bridges in categories such as load bearing ability and aesthetics. This year, 27 teams competed, and four of those groups had bridges that held more than 150 pounds before breaking!  After two hours of bridge testing, the team with the most efficient bridge was declared the winner.

Billiken BEAMS Winners:

The Billiken BEAMS Competition concluded this year’s National Engineers Week events.