On Friday, students from Polytech High School in Kent County visited Spencer Lab to test their structural bridge designs. These 20 students are all enrolled in a CAD class and are planning to enter their bridges into a design competition. MESS members Laura van der Post, Matt Durst, and Mike Pfeiffer led students on a tour of the Design Studio and machine shop, as well as the Formula SAE room. Dr. Buckley and these MESS members assisted students in testing their designs in compression. Students left with data that will allow them to better design their bridges.

Check out Polytech’s CAD website.

MESS ambassadors helped to host the Mechanical Engineering Department’s Chair’s Council this past week. The Chair’s Council is a departmental advisory board comprised of ME Department alumni who are leaders in business, engineering, and education. MESS ambassadors members of the council on a tour of Spencer Lab and gave them the students’ perspective on life in the Department. They also discussed The Design Studio project and helped us officially kick-off our fundraising campaign. Great job, MESS!

MESS lauched its outreach program on October 12th, 2012, with a visit to the Delaware School for the Deaf in Newark, DE. MESS Ambassadors, Laura van der Post and Mike Pfeiffer, spoke to a mixed group of high schoolers about the human body as a machine. Students got to measure their center of mass with a balance board and do some experiments on themselves to see how center of mass affects balance during exercise.

The MESS squad was out again in full force for the second Blue & Gold Recruiting event at UD Dept Mechanical Engineering. We had about 30 prospective students and their parents come through Spencer Lab on Saturday, Oct 13th. Special thanks to MESS grad mentors (and alums), Amy and Zach, for bringing the enthusiasm.

The MESS kicked off its Peer Mentoring Program for underclassmen with a mixer – engineering style – this past Sunday evening. ME freshmen students met the upperclassmen, including Peer Mentoring Officers Mike Pfeiffer and Mike Marando. The group tackled some fun engineering challenges, including “Tower of Tuna” (make a structure out of 3 sheets of paper that supports the most cans of tuna) and composite beam building.

Welcome, Freshmen Class, we’re looking forward to working with you for the next few years.

More information on the Peer Mentoring program is available at this link right HERE.

This past Saturday, MESS members Anna, David, Dhara, Jess, Laura, and Matt represented the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the university’s Blue & Gold day. About 50 students and 100 parents were in attendance. Dr. Buckley, Dr. Santare, and Dr. Schwartz were all present to talk to parents and prospective students. These visitors went on tours of the Design Studio (while learning about UD’s unique design curriculum), Dr. Agrawal’s robotics lab, and the FSAE room.

So, word around Spencer Lab is that the Department is gearing up to renovate a big chunk of the building for dedicated undergrad lab and design space. This rumor is very, very true. The project is called The Design Studio, and it will be an open-access, multi-use space for mechanical engineering undergraduate education.

MESS ambassadors and faculty are playing an important role in developing and fundraising for this new project, which we hope will be off the ground by Spring 2013. In the meanwhile, The MESS team has gotten a head start on the project by revamping the prototyping shop next to the lab (see pic).

Stay tuned for more news on The Design Studio.

At last night’s MESS meeting, the ambassadors revealed their new outreach modules, which will be ready to go “on the road” to schools starting in mid-Oct. We’re really excited about this new curriculum and we think the students will be, too!

Here’s what’s coming:

Good Vibrations/Bad Vibrations – Sound waves, natural frequency, and dampening.

Composites: Best. Materials. Ever. – What they are and how they’re used to make awesome stuff.

Engineering Movement: Gears, Motors, and Robots – The latest in robotics research and the basics about motors and gears.

In the usual MESS style, all of our new workshops are interactive and include hands-on activities appropriate for middle and high schoolers.

Teachers, sign up HERE for us to bring these new modules to your classroom.

The MESS visited Kent County Polytech High School on Tuesday, September 25th, and talked with approximately 20 junior and senior-year students in their Computer Aided Drafting and Design (CADD) class. MESS faculty advisor, Dr. Jenni Buckley, reviewed the basics of trusses and frames, and students applied these concepts to The Marshmallow Challenge, where they were tasked with building the tallest freestanding structure possible using spaghetti, tape, and string.

The MESS is looking forward to seeing the students again in October at MESS Headquarters in Spencer Lab on the UD Campus. MESS ambassadors will judge Polytech students structural designs for their upcoming bridge build project.

More photos of this visit are available on our Facebook page.

MESS members had a busy day today. They kicked things off at 9 am with the ME Freshmen Orientation, where they talked with incoming students about surviving their freshmen year, getting engaged with student groups in the department, and the new MESS peer mentoring program.

Then we welcomed new MESS members at The MESS Training Day. Our new members learned about the MESS’s goals to Retain, Recruit, and Advance talented young people in the ME field, and got some coaching from our MESS student leaders on how to give engaging presentations. We broke into workgroups and brainstormed new curriculum.

The day wrapped up with an open house for our incoming freshmen, hosted by The MESS.

And then we all took a nap!

More photos from the day are on The Facebook.