Elementary School Day - Engineers Week 2018
The American Society of Civil Engineers Los Angeles Younger Member Forum (ASCE LA YMF) and the City of Los Angeles, with the support of the Offices of Councilmembers David Ryu (Council District 4), Mitch O'Farrell (Council District 13), Herb Wesson (Council District 10), Marqueece Harris-Dawson (Council District 8), and Paul Krekorian (Council District 2), hosted its 5th Annual Engineers Week Celebration on February 20 – 24, 2018.
As our first event in our 5-day activites of Engineers' Week, we kicked off the celebration with our Elementary School Day. Led by Transportation Engineering Associate, Brian Phan of LADOT, we were able to invite over 170 students to City Hall for a fun day of engineering learning. As the buses rolled in one by one, we had all the students gather onto the City Hall's forecourt where our professional engineer volunteers distributed shirts and snacks for the participating students.
We hosted students from Angeles Mesa Elementary, Los Feliz Elementary, 3rd Street Elementary, Wilshire Park Elementary, and St. Frances Elementary at this year's Engineers Week. Each school had STEM and Engineering related programs and encouraged the schools to attend our Engineers Week 2018. The students were then escorted into the City of Los Angeles Council Chambers meeting to sit in front of all City of Los Angeles Council members. For many, this is the first time they have ever visited City Hall and it was an exhilarating experience for them. During the meeting, Councilmember David E. Ryu of Council District 4 gave a special shout out to all the schools that were attending our Engineers Week Event. As he recognized each school, the students jumped, cheered, and screamed with joy.
The students then proceed on a historic and engineering tour of City Hall. With the help of our ASCE volunteers, they were able to see the Mayor's office, visit the Councilmember David Ryu in his office, and see the entire City skyline by the balcony on the Tom Bradley Room.
Weeks prior to the city hall visits, ASCE visited each school and to help the students with their engineering projects. The students had a challenge to build an egg drop container that could withstand the fall off at 2 story high city hall Rotunda. In order to build a well engineered device, the students were only allowed to use everyday household items such as plates, napkins, straws, toothpicks, tape, and cotton balls.
After the tour of City hall, the students were able to drop off their engineered devices on the City Hall. We told the students that this would be there one and only opportunity to drop eggs and trash in a public building so be sure to make the most of it. As each team tossed their devices over the balcony, the students below rooted and cheered their school on and were excited to see if their egg made the drop or not. The egg drop event was a huge success and although not every egg survived, the students each learned a valuable lesson on their engineering design and were encouraged to improve their design next time.
We would like to give a special thanks to Council District 4, David Ryu for sponsoring this event and helping us educate the next generation of engineers. We would like to also give a special thanks to the City of Los Angeles for their dedication towards the engineering profession. In addition, we would like to thank our Engineers Week Chair, Monica Morales of JACOBS for being the lead for Engineers Week 2018. In addition, we would like to thank our amazing sponsors as none of this would have been possible if it wasn't for them.
