Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment

ABSTRACT

Baylor University holds weekend-long Invitation to Excellence (I2E) events to recruit high-achieving high school seniors. Each prospective engineering student attends two engagement sessions one hosted by the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and the other by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In this work, we present design challenges from the ME engagement sessions. In the ME engagement session, students are assigned to teams for a design challenge. Each team receives 60 drinking straws plus one yard of duck tape with which they build a structure to support a stack of course catalogs over a wooden block. Teams are allowed 20 minutes for design-build after which all teams test their structures. The structure is placed over a wooden block. Course catalogs are stacked on it until either one of the catalogs falls to the floor or the structure contacts the top of the block. The engagement session concludes with sharing of reflections on the design experience and recognition of the winning team. Recently, we began providing some teams with tools (i.e., tape measures and scissors) to use during the design challenge. Anecdotally we observed during the January 2019 event that some teams spent excessive amounts of time using the tools to measure and cut straws while failing to complete their structures. Out of curiosity we planned the November 2019 and January 2020 I2E events to explore this phenomenon by using half of our ME breakout sessions as Control groups (No Tools) and the other half as Test groups (Tools). Our reported findings include analysis of differences between Control and Test groups in both load bearing capacity and variety of design concepts. Our null hypothesis was that there would be no difference in average load-bearing capacity between the Control and Test group's structures. With the COVID-19 global pandemic, we were tasked with providing a virtual design experience using Zoom sessions. We will also provide a discussion of the individual design challenges that involved building a bridge from 1/2 sheet of paper that spanned the opening of a ceramic mug and held as much ballast (in the form of coins) as possible without failing. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021