Skurla, C., & Donndelinger, J. A. (2021, August), Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment   Paper presented at 2021 First-Year Engineering Experience, Virtual . 10.18260/1-2--38396

\bibitem{asee_peer_38396}
  Skurla, C., \& Donndelinger, J. A. (2021, August), \emph{Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment }
  Paper presented at 2021 First-Year Engineering Experience, Virtual .
  10.18260/1-2--38396

Carolyn Skurla and Joseph Anthony Donndelinger.  "Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment ".  2021 First-Year Engineering Experience, Virtual , 2021, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2021.  https://peer.asee.org/38396 Internet.  24 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_38396}
  Carolyn Skurla and Joseph Anthony Donndelinger.
  "Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment ".
  \emph{2021 First-Year Engineering Experience, Virtual , 2021, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2021.
  https://peer.asee.org/38396 Internet.  24 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_38396
author = "Carolyn Skurla and Joseph Anthony Donndelinger"
title = "Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment "
booktitle = "2021 First-Year Engineering Experience"
year = "2021"
month = "August"
address = "Virtual "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/38396}
number = {10.18260/1-2--38396}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Baylor University holds weekend-long Invitation to Excellence (I2E) events to recruit high-achieving high school seniors. The Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) hosts multiple breakout sessions during I2E events. Each prospective engineering student attends one of these sessions during the I2E event.

In the ME breakout session, students are assigned to teams of three or four for a design challenge. Each team receives 60 drinking straws plus one yard of duct tape and must build a structure to support a stack of course catalogs over a wooden block. Teams are allowed 20 minutes for design and construction, after which they load their structures until one of the course catalogs either falls to the floor or contacts the wooden block. The activity concludes with sharing of reflections on the design experience and recognition for the winning team. 

Recently, we have begun providing teams with tools (i.e., tape measures and scissors) to use during the design challenge. Anecdotally, we observed that some teams spent excessive amounts of time using the tools to measure and cut straws while failing to completely build their structures. In the November 2019 and January 2020 I2E events, we explore3 this phenomenon by using half of our ME breakout sessions as control groups (receiving only supplies) and the other half as experimental groups (receiving both supplies and tools). Our reported findings will include analyses of differences observed between control and experimental groups both in performance of structures and in variety of design concepts. Our initial hypothesis was that the addition of tools would adversely impact the teams' abilities to design and build structures that on average were as strong as the teams who were not supplied with tools. 

With the COVID-19 global pandemic, we were tasked with providing a virtual design experience using Zoom sessions. We will also provide a discussion of the individual design challenges that involved building a bridge from 1/2 sheet of paper that spanned the opening of a coffee mug and held as much ballast (in the form of coins) as possible without failing.
AU  - Carolyn Skurla
AU  - Joseph Anthony Donndelinger
CY  - Virtual 
DA  - 2021/08/09
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Invitation to Excellence: Design Challenges in Low Resource Settings for Student Recruitment 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/38396
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--38396
ER  -