Aerospace Engineering Outreach – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Aerospace Engineering Outreach

Linnea Lindblom

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Pronouns: she/her

Research Mentor(s): Anouck Girard, Associate Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 5 (3pm-3:50pm)
Breakout Room: Room 16
Presenter: 1

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Abstract

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing schools to close, effectively teaching students ages 11-18 has created two main challenges: (1) keeping the students engaged in a virtual environment and (2) adapting hands-on activities normally done in a classroom. This project aimed to tackle both of these issues by creating a video and hands-on activities on the core topics of aerospace and physics. Many high schools in Michigan have students who don’t know of any engineers in their lives and as a result these students have no interest in becoming an engineer themselves. In order to reach these students, this outreach project focused on making a video about aerospace engineering concepts related to American football to keep them interesting. Many students have an unbelievable passion for sports, and if only a fraction of that could be focused on an academic area then their futures would brighten significantly. The feedback we have received about this video shows that students were well engaged with the content created and found the hands-on activities to be simple enough to complete at home. The next step in the project is making an entire aerospace engineering course, which is normally taught to undergraduate upperclassmen, adapted to fit the needs of high school students. Ultimately we want to provide teachers with an engaging way to teach students, and to inspire students to follow a career path that elicits a similar passion in them that we have for aerospace engineering.

Authors: Linnea Lindblom
Research Method: Computer Programming

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