The Time to Compete is Now!

Organized competitions remain a great way to inspire the fledgling engineer. When they take place at the scholastic level, these competitions are able to show students that STEM education can be fun, and that a career in engineering is a goal worth striving for by both boys and girls.

The Mindstorms Challenge, a Lego Robotics Competition

Recently the 13th annual Mindstorms Challenge, a robotics competition featuring Lego toys, took place at Wichita State University. In addition to encouraging students to study their STEM subjects, the competition is also charged with promoting the principles of collaboration and teamwork. Those latter skills become highly important when engaged in an engineering career.

The students taking place in Mindstorms found that while building the Lego robots didn’t take too much time, programming the plastic devices involved a significant amount of effort. This year’s competition featured 31 different teams.

Wichita State’s School of Engineering sponsored the competition in collaboration with Spirit AeroSystems. “Kids come here [and] learn about some math principles that actually has application,” said WSU Professor Larry Whitman. Hopefully, today’s Lego robotic engineers will become tomorrow’s mechanical engineers.

Imagination Station Competition part of National Engineers Week

Another competition for students took place as part of National Engineers Week. This event, held at Toledo’s Imagination Station, involved the children designing and building towers made up of only old newspapers and masking tape. These structures needed to be able to hold the weight of a baseball while “towering” to the height of at least 18 inches.

Anna Kolin, Imagination Station spokesman, said the competition intended to teach children the principles of iterative design, construction, and testing. Each tower had to be able to stand while holding the baseball and standing up to the stress caused by a high-powered fan.

If you can remember fondly on the days when you first decided to be an engineer, these stories of youngsters dipping their toes into the engineering science water must inspire.

If you’d like to further your own engineering career, be sure to talk to the people at The Talley Group, one of the leading staffing companies in the industry. Their helpful recruiters can make sure your career stands up to the stresses of today’s market.