A couple of cold weeks ago, Sinclair Community College hosted held its annual Engineers Day, an event that began more than 13 years ago.  On the Friday of National Engineers Week, all the Sinclair engineering technologies programs take over the first floor of one building and set up demonstrations and presentations for Dayton, Ohio area high school students.

This February 19th, from 9:00 a.m. until noon, the students moved in groups of 20-30 through the various demonstrations.  They got to briefly experience the wide variety of exciting engineering programs by seeing up close, for example, how guitars are being built from scratch, how flight simulators work, how ergonomics impact the workplace, and CNC equipment in action.  In addition, they met with leaders from Tech Prep and the Co-op program.

More than 260 students and their chaperones from nine schools, as well as several individual families, attended; and more than 50 faculty, professional and support staff, and student workers gave their time and effort to ensure the students all had a meaningful and productive experience.  Programs represented were: Automotive; Aviation; Biotech; Automation and Control, Electronics; Civil; Architectural; HVACR; Computer Aided Manufacturing; and Operations Technology.

While this is an exciting and important event for Sinclair’s Science, Mathematics, and Engineering division, it has a widespread impact for the college.  Each year, several of the high school instructors have shared with us that for some of their students it is the first visit to a college campus.  This year a chaperone told a faculty person that he had needed to choose between two worthwhile field trip opportunities, and after the seeing all the presentations, he had no doubt that coming to Sinclair had been the right decision.

Perhaps more significant than the information that is imparted at Engineers Day is the enthusiasm from all involved, from the faculty giving the demonstrations, to the Sinclair student workers escorting the high school students through the tour, to the admissions staff on hand to answer questions about coming to college.  The impact of that kind of encouragement cannot be measured.

Gilah Pomeranz

NCME Project Manager

Sinclair Community College