Nicole Baer, P.E., of Hope Furrer Associates, participated once again in the semi-annual Career Fair sponsored by The Maryland State Highway Administration and the American Society of Civil Engineers, Maryland Chapter. This event, held on November 1, 2016, engaged over 400 high school students from various Anne Arundel County High Schools.
It is a very high-energy format, in which students are broken into small groups of 10-12 people, so they can travel around a banquet room furnished with displays by local engineers representing various fields related to civil engineering. In only 90 minutes time, the students learn about careers like highway engineering, geotechnical engineering, landscape architecture, environmental engineering, and, of course, structural engineering.
Nicole manned one of two tables devoted to structural engineering, and she was able to utilize a small scale “shake table” in order to visually demonstrate building design challenges posed by earthquakes. The goal is to get kids thinking about engineering as a career option, and Nicole is always pleasantly surprised by the intuitive knowledge so many of them have about structural systems. Hopefully, they see that engineering isn’t just number crunching and drawings on paper. It’s a prediction of real life, which is then built and tested in the elements. Engineering can be fun! To see the shake table in action, click here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/ph-ac-cn-northcounty-stem-1102-20161101-story.html
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