Engineers Week Spotlights Creativity, Community

Gracie Felsenthal, E28, is thinking out loud as she considers how to best protect her egg from cracking. While the egg is nested in cotton balls lining a paper cup, she’s also betting on balloons to soften the impact when it’s dropped from the top-most floor of the Tsungming Tu Complex atrium.

“The more balloons the better,” she says, as she tapes yet another in place. “What was it called that we learned in physics?” she asks. “The longer it takes for something to hit, the better chance of survival,” she says. 

For Migdalia Lopez, E25, the society president, observing fellow students tackle the challenge affirmed the essential innovation that drives engineering. 

“Playing around with the different materials and figuring out a way of making an egg not break, that really makes you think out-of-the-box,” she said. “Maybe, if it fails, it will make you think of other techniques. People tend to think engineering is all about math and equations and physics, but I think this kind of activity shows you that it's a lot about just trial and error. It’s about iterating and having fun.”

Indeed, discovering and enjoying engineering were two interconnected themes throughout this year's Engineers Week.

Rekha Mahadevan, E27, for instance, saw it an opportunity to relieve the possible intimidation students might have around joining Students for the Exploration and Discovery of Space (SEDs), where team projects include the chance to build large-scale rockets. 

But through a “Basics of Flight” workshop and friendly competition (for both creativity and overall flight distance), students built and tested paper airplanes and balsa wood gliders, and in a casual environment, she said. 

“Our goal was to get to know some potential new members, but also to show the more creative aspect of the SEDS in a fun, collaborative way,” said Mahadevan, event coordinator. “It was a great way to get to know some of the club leaders without the nervousness that can come along with some of the more engineering aspects of the club." 

One sure sign it worked: “There was a lot of laughter!” she said.

Overall, she said, the competition sparked creativity, from putting a fresh spin on a basal wood kit to mastering paper folding for streamlined aerodynamics. 

“It was great to see students get excited about the idea of design and of trial and error,” she said. “It just showed the power of doing as many iterations as possible, and it was interesting that, by working together, they had more success than by working alone.”

Engineers Week ran from February 16-22, but first-year engineering students got a jumpstart on EWeek on February 8 when they transformed Tsungming Tu Complex into a giant chain reaction machine, “a classic example of demonstrating the transfer of energy, laws of motion, and several other practical applications of engineering while providing creators with a hands-on making experience,” said organizer Ethan Danahy, E00, G02, G07, research associate professor of computer science, and coordinator of the school’s first-year courses in engineering.

But success of the Engineering Design Challenge is also measured in less technical ways, he said. “This is a social event that’s great at helping students network and explore different types of engineering right before they have to declare their major, and have fun in an accessible, approachable way,” he said.

“Instilled in the single activity are so many attributes of engineering: communication, collaboration, design, prototyping, testing, iterating,” he added. “And of course the final showcase, where at the end of the day we all hold our breath and see if the creation we all made together actually worked!”

Engineers Week also featured an NE-FIRST Robotics Alum Hackathon on February 17, the first ever held at Tufts. Boston-area alums of the FIRST Robotics program were welcome to come to campus for a meetup and full day of robotic hacking. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a nonprofit robotics community that organizes robotics competition leagues for students in grades K-12.

With college student representatives from MIT, Olin College of Engineering, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute joining the Tufts students, faculty members Danahy and Markus Nemitz, assistant professor of mechanical engineering (both have volunteered for the organization), contributed to a daylong program that introduced students to the new open-source robotics platform, Experiential Robotics Platform (XRP), a low-cost training platform. 

“We believe this robotics platform offers tremendous opportunities for education at the high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels," said Nemitz, who, along with Danahy, has taught engineering courses at Tufts using this new platform; both are eager to help students push its limits.

Throughout the Hackathon, “we saw students create maze-solving robots, AI-based tracking systems, robotic controlled marionettes, and art-creating bots that could create logos and designs,” said Danahy. “Engineering isn't done in a silo, so it was great to have engineering and robotics students from other schools come to our campus and collaborate with our students, combining their creativity to create new inventions with a cutting-edge educational robotics platform.”

Woven throughout the week were opportunities to reflect on the engineering profession. Faculty and administrators who shared their experiences and insights included Karen Panetta, dean of graduate education for the School of Engineering, and distinguished professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who spoke on her journey as a pioneer in the engineering field, and Tufts Gordon Institute instructor Jane Seminara and executive director Kevin Oye, who highlighted the role humanities play in the education of engineers.

For students anticipating their transition to a career, networking opportunities included a session called “How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out,” and a co-op panel with accompanying employee showcase. 

Students were also invited to share their ideas at a Meet the Deans lunch with School of Engineering Dean Kyongbum Lee and Dean of Undergraduate Education Andrew Ramsburg. Together, they continue to build a supportive and collaborative School of Engineering.