ASME Diversity Action Grant Report

Transcription

1 ASME student sections that receive funding through the Diversity Action Grant (DAG) program must complete and submit this report to ASME S DAG Review Committee by no later than June 3 of the academic year in which the support was granted. Any unused funds must be returned to ASME with the report. ASME student sections that fail to submit a timely report may not be eligible to receive DAG funding for future proposals. The outline below is the minimum required info your report should include. Additional information regarding the project, including photographs, copies of marketing materials and additional text, may be included with this project report. NOTE: if there are personal details you do not want included when reports are published on-line, please specify and it will be removed (i.e. names, contact info). PICTURES: if you are including photos, please be sure to include in your that ASME has permission to use and post the images on its website. Date: 5/20/2015 Student Section: Florida International University Student Section Chair/Contact: Giancarlo Lombardi Address: W Flagler St, Miami, FL Telephone: (305) glomb002@fiu.edu ASME Student Section Advisor: Benjamin Boesl Address: W Flagler St, Miami, FL Telephone: (305) bboesl@fiu.edu Summary of DAG Project ASME DAG Funding: $ 1500 Total Project Budget: $ _1750 Partnering Organizations: IEEE, SWE, Tau Beta Pi, SHPE, NSBE Attendance: Total _ 750 Women 750 Minorities _1500 ASME Section/Region Reps N/A 1

2 Project Title: Engineering Expo Project Description: One of FIU s key engineering events, titled the Engineering Expo, is held annually as part of National Engineering Week. As part of this event, local K-12 students were invited on the campus to visit and tour the labs and see the cool projects engineering students at FIU are participating in. The motivation for this event is to inspire these young students to pursue a STEM career by showing them its various applications. Project Goal/Objective and How Achieved: In order to have a greater impact on the students attending the Engineering Expo, our ASME FIU student section decided to host two separate events, instead of just one. This year the student s activities focused on the field of rocketry. Our group, the ASME student section, conducted two presentations for this event. The first presentation was titled Propulsion 101. This presentation served as an introductory course in propulsion and how things move. The primary vehicle for the material was a PowerPoint presentation. At the end, a balloon experiment was conducted where a large and small balloon were set to race against each other; asking the students to predict which would go farther due to the pressure differences inside. Additionally, the students were allowed to handle the team s high-powered rockets (no fuel loaded) in order to get a hands-on appreciation for the components involved. Our second demonstration consisted of showing the composition of different propellant grains. Very small amounts of conventional rocket fuels were combusted in a confined environment in order to showcase the burn profiles of rocket motors. Also, different coloring agents were added to help explain some of the chemical interactions undergone in the combustion process. Evaluation of Program s Success: To ensure that the demonstrations were useful and conducted in an acceptable manner, feedback was sought from chaperones (teachers and parents) of the visiting students. The event was well-received. Many expressed their appreciation for the effort dedicated towards organizing the event and encouraging those students that attended to pursue a STEM career. In addition, several FIU faculty members (Department Chairs, Ms. Stephanie Strange, Vice-Dean of Student Access and Retention, Dr. Masoud Milani, Director of the Center for Diversity in Engineering and Computing (CDEC) and Dr. Norman Munroe, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Studies) were present to evaluate the demonstrations. They also were pleased with the outcome of the Expo. A link to a news article of the event, where two of our members were quoted, can be found at: Other Comments/Observations/Pertinent Info: N/A. 2

3 3

4 Gallery of Photos Propulsion 101 presentation ASME Diversity Action Grant Report Figure 1: Team member Shane Colon explaining deep space propulsion Figure 2: Team member Giancarlo Lombardi conducting a "balloon race" to showcase propulsion principles 4

5 Propellant Grain composition Demonstration Figure 3: Team member Joseph Coverston teaching about various fuel grains 5

6 Figure 4: Burning a tiny propellant grain as part of the demonstration 6