STEM Career Day
Northern New Mexico University and the Northern Rio Grande STEM Col Lab present:
STEM Career Day
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
9AM - 2PM
&
Inauguration ceremony for the Northern Rio Grande STEM Col-Lab Center
12:25-1:10 PM at HT-130
This event is free and open to the community.
Featuring Presentations by Northern faculty and special guest Dr. Joan Bennet:
Joan Wennstrom Bennett is a fungal geneticist who also is active in issues concerning women in science. Educated at Upsala College (B.S. 1963) and the University of Chicago (M.S. 1964, Ph.D. 1967), she was on the faculty of Tulane University for 35 years. She is a past president of the American Society for Microbiology (1990-1991) and of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (2001-2002), and past Editor in Chief of Mycologia (2000-2004). She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
STEM Career Day will introduce students to STEM careers and give them the opportunity to interact and learn from men and women in STEM professions and fields of study. Students will gain insight in career opportunities and postsecondary education.
The goal of this event is to increase interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics through hands-on experience, provide career awareness and to give students the opportunity to connect with STEM professionals.
Exhibit Descriptions
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Abiquiu Lake: Information about different career opportunities within the natural resource management field with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from Abiquiu Lake, display will include video and Aquatic invasive species display
U.S. Forest Service, Carson National Forest: Careers in the U.S. Forest Service
Electric Car Challenge: Students will present models they built to participate in the competition and talk about the design, building process, and learning experience from the challenge.
New Mexico-Future City: The Future City Competition is a national, project-based learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Students work as a team with an educator and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCity™ software; research and write solutions to an engineering problem; build tabletop scale models with recycled materials; and present their ideas before judges at Regional Competitions. Sixth grade students from James Rodriguez Elementary will be presenting their models.
Bureau of Land Management: This station will provide students with an introduction to land management and the BLM Fire Program, the planning process regarding habitat management and fire use by “hands on’’ sampling various vegetation components.
STEM Career Day Hands -On Activities
“Arduino” By Professor Raul Peralta
Students will be exposed to the Arduino platform. Arduino is an open platform used for building electronics projects, and it is composed of physical programmable circuit board and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that runs on a computer. When the program is ready, it is uploaded into the physical board for testing. In this introductory Arduino workshop, participants will use the platform to learn the essential input/output instructions that allow them to set up the circuit board and command LEDs and push buttons. After that, students will reuse the hardware and the instructions to create a program that simulates street-lights.
“Mechanical Engineering Lab” By Dr. Ashis Nandy
Students will be exposed to real world engineering problems in the Mechanical Engineering field through hands-on experimentation in a laboratory setup. They will be exposed to sensors and data acquisition systems and will be using software to analyze the results.
“Solar Energy” By Dr. Vishal Mehta
Students will learn about energy available from a free source: the sun. Concepts of Photovoltaic and Solar thermal energy will be introduced via training modules.
“Networks” By Dr. Jorge Crichingno
Students will be exposed to the basics of computer networks design using a Cisco simulator software named packet tracer.
“Introduction to Computer Science” By Dr. Ivan Lopez
Students will be exposed to the basics of computer science foundations. In this session the students will also learned about the engineering programs offered at Northern and the scholarships available.
“How High Is That Lamppost” By Professor Charles Knight
Using the idea of similar triangles, it is possible to determine the height of an object without directly measuring it. This will be done on a mini-field trip, using a tape measure and a dowel, if the sun is shining. Groups of 3 students each will do this hands-on project.
