Program Description

The CMU Engineering Workshop offers hands-on experiences to high school students in the realm of mechanical engineering with a focus on Design and Manufacturing. In their projects, students will come up with their own product designs and then will learn how to render their designs for fabrication through engineering sketches and Computer-Aided Design (CAD). They will be taught how to evaluate a design with Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), and they will fabricate their products utilizing laser cutters, 3D printers, and hand-held tools. Students will complete three to five unique projects during the week and will, of course, get to take their work home.
 

In addition to the instructor, current CMU engineering students will serve as teaching assistants, working with groups of five to six workshop participants so that all participants can get sufficient individual help in completing their projects.

Other Engineering Disciplines

Every day, we will have a presentation about a different engineering discipline, followed by a tour of a related lab. Departments may include: Biomedical, Chemical, Civil & Environmental, Electrical & Computer, Materials Science, Mechanical, or Robotics. Through this, students will get an idea of the different branches of engineering and what careers they can lead to.

Daily Schedule

9 am - 9:30 am

Lecture

9:30 am - 10:30 am

Ideation, Conceptual Design, and Prototyping

10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Detailed Design

12:00 pm - 12:30 pm

Lunch (provided)

Presentation about engineering departments

Tour of engineering research labs

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Product Fabrication

3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Product completion

Program Goal

We want high school students to have the opportunity to explore engineering, to learn what it might be like to study engineering in college and to make it a career. Despite all the publicity surrounding STEM initiatives (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), many students have no exposure to engineering at school and have very little idea about the field. From the workshop, we hope they will get some understanding of what it means to be an engineer and see if it might be right for them – before they need to decide their college path. And, whether our attendees end up pursuing engineering or not, we’ll make sure they have a lot of fun during their week at CMU!

Based on a CMU Course

The summer workshop program is based on CMU’s 24-672: DIY Design and Fabrication, an introductory course for engineering graduate students. [Read a web article about the course.]