Tour of Engineering Summer Camp
A total of 16 students in grades 9th and 10th participated in The Citadel’s “Tour of Engineering” week-long (30 hrs) summer camp at the South Carolina Governor’s School of Science and Mathematics (SCGSSM) in Hartsville.
Led by Dr. Dimitra Michalaka, students learned about engineering and participated in hands-on projects. Topics covered included what engineers do, types of engineering, necessary skills to be successful, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, computer/software engineering, sustainability, and more. In civil engineering, emphasis was given to bridge design and construction, complete streets, multimodal mobility, connected vehicles and congestion mitigation. Along with learning concepts, students were involved with many hands-on activities. They designed bridges using Bridge Designer 2018, constructed their bridge designs using K’nex, designed and built a section of a complete street (street for all users), built autonomous vehicles using Lego Mindstorm EV3, and programmed their vehicles to autonomously travel between complete street sections crossing the bridges.
Furthermore, students played board games focused on transportation engineering including “Tokyo Highway” and “Railroad Ink”. One student wrote an article about his experience with the “Tour of Engineering” camp that was included at the STEMEDGE magazine published by the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools (NCSSS): p. 28 at http://ncsss.org/images/magazine/the-stem-edge-ncsss-magazine-2019q3.pdf.
Pre-Knob Experience
The Citadel’s Civil Engineering Department welcomed prospective 16- to 18-year-old students to observe college student life through firsthand observation and engagement. Student recruits (pre-knobs) are required to declare the academic major in which they are interested and spend time at that department when they visit the campus. Additionally, high school students shadow a civil engineering freshman student and spend the night in The Citadel dormitories (barracks), joining in family-style dining at the campus Mess Hall, and attending engineering classes. Pre-knobs learn about transportation engineering, see previous highway design projects, learn about research projects, and attend a transportation engineering course while visiting the department. Fifteen students participated in the Pre-knob program in September 2019.
