By Eric Wilson-Edge
Engineering is one of those words we think we understand but can’t really define. An engineer is presumed to be smart and possibly a little nerdy. This person is “sciency” and sometimes thought of as socially awkward.
“People don’t really know what engineers do,” says Zella Kahn-Jetter, dean of the Hal and Inge Marcus School of Engineering at Saint Martin’s.
Perception is one of the things Kahn-Jetter hopes to change at the first ever Engineering Awareness Day. On Wednesday, February 19, Saint Martin’s will play host to 100 students from local high schools. These teens will get a chance to learn about the different branches of engineering through demonstrations and interactive experiments.
Dintie Mahamah is a professor of civil engineering. His main area of focus is water, a subject that has interested him since he was a child. “I looked at rivers, looked at lakes and just wondered what was happening there,” says Mahamah.
For his part, Mahamah will show students how a gas chromatograph works. “We can take a sample of their breath, put it in the machine and learn how much carbon dioxide is in their breath,” Mahamah says.
There’s a reason for breaking out the fancy instruments. Dr. Mahamah wants students to understand how engineers help keep water clean and safe. The water we drink or sprinkle on our gardens has a more complex history than a simple turn of the handle suggests.
Pretty much everything is engineered. The computer or phone you’re reading this story on probably involved an electrical engineer. The word “engineer” is so familiar it’s casual and misunderstood. “Someone wouldn’t just build a car and see if it works,” says Kahn-Jetter. “You have to understand the math, the science and the psychics behind it.”
Kahn-Jetter is passionate about the subject. She believes engineers do as much good as more celebrated heroes like doctors and fire fighters. “It if wasn’t for mechanical engineers you wouldn’t have prosthetic devices,” says Kahn-Jetter.
Or a solar powered ice maker. Some engineering students at Saint Martin’s created the ice maker that harnesses energy from solar panels. In cloudier climates, the machine can be run using wood and a little fire. While this may not be applicable in your life, the device has practical applications in developing nations with unreliable power sources.
According to Kahn-Jetter, Washington has the second highest amount of high-tech jobs in the United States but we’re ranked number 41 in terms of graduating people with enough technical skill from two and four year schools. This is just one step in a larger push to get kids interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.
Getting girls involved is a goal for Kahn-Jetter. She remembers the awkward feeling of being in a physics class of 150 people, most of whom were men. Kahn-Jetter thinks the messaging is wrong. “Girls want to work in fields that have an immediate sense of helping somebody,” says Kahn-Jetter. “When you look at the websites for some colleges, all you see on their engineering pages are cars and gears. You don’t see pictures of people with prosthetic arms.”
Engineers never use tape to repair their eyeglasses. Honestly, they would find a more sophisticated method to fix the glasses or design a better pair. These are smart people with cool jobs. Hopefully this is the image that will come across on Engineering Awareness Day.
