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St. Cloud State University
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Engineering Day delivers
By Jamie Garberich
Published:
Monday, October 21, 2002
Media Credit: charles martin
Prospective students Justin Thell and Ben Klaser are fascinated with a project designed by professor Kay Thamrichai and SCSU students in the engineering department.
Media Credit: charles martin
Engineer day features many exhibits, which are produced by students and faculty. This display showed an example of the ability’s that the Rapid Prototype Machine can achieve. This is only one of the many manufacturing machines in the engineering department.
The Engineering and Computing Center (ECC) was bustling with activity Friday as students, their families and faculty attended the sixth annual Engineering Day.
Engineering Day, sponsored by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Department, was designed for anyone interested in exploring a career in engineering.
“Our motivation is to publicize the engineering profession to the society,” said Yi Zheng, professor and department chair of electrical and computer engineering. “Our primary goal is to bring this information to students…to see what the industry is about.”
From 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., anyone interested could attend seven workshops and demonstrations, exhibits by leading industrial employers and meet with the engineering faculty, current students and alumni.
“This (Engineering Day) is an exciting way to meet faculty and students,” said Steve Covey, professor and department chair of engineering and manufacturing.
Engineering Day opened with the engineering faculty, who gave a key-note address called “Overview of an Engineering Career,” which introduced the major and the qualifications. From there, visitors were put into groups that went from demonstration to demonstration learning about the different types of engineering projects that students were working on and classes that professors were teaching in.
One demonstration was called the Rapid Prototyping Machine, which allows engineers to print an actual 3-D concept and make a real-life model. The machine can draw a part, export it onto a file on the computer and from there it is broken up into different layers. Before your eyes, one could actually see the part being made, layer by layer in the machine.
Another lab was the Voice Signal Processing demonstration, which allowed one to record his or her own voice and add an echo signal and noise to it.
Through the computer, demonstrators were able to change the voice to a low, medium or high pitch. The lower pitches made a voice sound more male and deep, while the higher pitches resembled something like the voices of “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”
After visitors toured all the demonstrations, they were able to meet with leading industrial employers.
Company representatives present with exhibits included the well-known Honeywell, SPX (a valve and control company), Cummins (a power generator corporation) and UNISYS (a worldwide information technology services and solutions company). The employers gave visitors a chance to ask questions about their companies and offered internships and future job prospects.
“Because of the down-size of the economy, they (industrial leaders) are looking for students to be hired by them and internships,” Zheng said.
Among the many visitors Friday was Chris Werner, a Moundsview High School senior who came with his parents and was interested in a possible career in engineering.
“I just wanted to get a broad idea of the engineer field–it’s so massive,” Werner said.
The accredited engineering department at SCSU is the only one in the state with both mechanical and manufacturing engineering programs. On Engineering Day, the department had the chance to educate visitors on the many reasons to choose SCSU’s programs over any other schools’.
“Aside from the qualified faculty and close ties to industrial leaders, the engineering department has the highest pass rate,” Covey said.
The electrical and manufacturing engineering programs also consistently do work for NASA, attesting to SCSU’s reputation as a leader in the field of engineering.
