'Engineer Your World' Design Project (By Bob Mahoney, Science & Mathematics Instructor)

The Upper Commons was the site for a roaring mini-motor-speedway, and the crowd cheered on their self-built cardboard cars careening ’cross the carpet.* Just another day for the students currently enrolled in the elective Engineer Your World (EYW) class.

 

EYW is a hands-on, design-based, inquiry-focused course wherein students discover the engineering design process from the inside out. They work in multi-level teams creating solutions to complex needs-defined challenges. Science, G.K. Chesterton once summarized, is either a tool or a toy. In the broadest sense, engineering is humanity’s greater worldly toolbox.

 

Engineer Your World’s opening unit lays the foundation for the collaboration, documentation, and engineering-specific skills and mental habits which the students will exercise throughout the year. Modeling—right from the start—the immersive philosophy of its entire curriculum (developed by the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering), the student teams dive directly into an actual real-world design challenge by assembling cardboard-chassis cardboard-wheels rubber-band-powered cars based on a variety of instruction sets. After each team has a go at producing and testing their original resulting racer, the students re-form into different teams to tackle the task of generating—designing and building—an even-better-performing vehicle.

 

In a nutshell, engineers design things…to be used…to satisfy needs. EYW encourages students to explore and execute the essential elements of this exciting discipline. Next up: designing and building a working camera.

*Carpet helped to gain sufficient traction