{"id":37026,"date":"2023-01-26T00:00:33","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T01:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=37026"},"modified":"2023-01-26T01:36:44","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T01:36:44","slug":"new-visions-shows-high-schoolers-their-engineering-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2023\/01\/26\/new-visions-shows-high-schoolers-their-engineering-future\/","title":{"rendered":"New Visions shows high schoolers their engineering future"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dozen people racing the clock are feverishly tearing apart a $65,000 plasma etcher inside Cornell\u2019s Phillips Hall. One pulls out a vacuum chamber as her colleague scrambles through a stack of blueprints to find the matching part. The delicate machine, used to help fabricate integrated circuits, is in thousands of pieces with hardly any time left.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is pretty cool,\u201d says Sarah Levine as she removes a gas valve. Time has run out and the team dismantling the large machine sets down the expensive hardware. The high-school students must get to their next activity.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

New Visions Engineering student Marley Thomson disassembles a plasma etcher.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

New Visions Engineering<\/a> is no ordinary program for high school seniors. For the past five years at Cornell, it has provided local students the opportunity to explore engineering careers and perform research activities typically experienced by college students \u2013 or in the case of disassembling a broken plasma etcher, not many people at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like taking things apart and seeing how it all works,\u201d says Levine, a senior at Lansing High School, adding that the program has steered her academic interests toward civil and environmental engineering.<\/p>\n

Students involved in the program \u2013 there are 13 participants this academic year \u2013 earn high-school credits, as well as seven college credits, by spending four hours a day, five days a week on Cornell\u2019s campus. Students also visit dozens of field trip locations such as Lockheed Martin and other regional businesses, exposing students to industries important to New York state\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe give them this wide variety of experiences, because a lot of them know they want to be engineers, but they don\u2019t exactly know all the different types of engineering,\u201d says David Syracuse, the New Visions Engineering teacher, who has appointments at Cornell Engineering and the Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which both support the program. \u201cIt really gives the students a leg up on their counterparts because they have a more long-distance view of their trajectory as an engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cameras, concrete and coffee<\/strong><\/p>\n

After gaining an appreciation for the inner workings of a plasma etcher, students will use a working version of the machine inside the clean room at the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) to etch a logo onto a silicon wafer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exercise is introducing students to many of the different career paths in nanotechnology, whether it\u2019s building machines, operating them or designing microelectronics,\u201d says Tom Pennell, CNF research support specialist and education coordinator. \u201cAnd with the federal and New York state push for semiconductor development, programs like New Visions can create a pipeline of workforce talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other activities this academic year included building pinhole cameras and developing pictures in a photographic darkroom, reverse engineering the mechanics inside a rechargeable flashlight, using chemical engineering to brew coffee to a specific strength, and learning how concrete strength is tested in a structural engineering lab.<\/p>\n

\"Cornell<\/a><\/div>\n

\u201cI wanted to do something different for my senior year and challenge myself,\u201d says Taylor Brock from Candor High School, who added that his favorite activities involved food science experiments at Cornell AgriTech. \u201cYou know that feeling when you walk into a classroom and you don\u2019t want to be there? I never feel that way with New Visions. Every day I get up and I\u2019m like, \u2018Let\u2019s go do something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

New Visions\u2019 focus on showing students how to apply science to solve societal problems provides a model for how STEM curricula could be better implemented in high schools, Syracuse says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese students understand engineering in a very intimate way, and that applying science is actually useful,\u201d says Syracuse. \u201cAll of our past cohorts have gone on to do amazing things, and I think it\u2019s due to the integrated nature of the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

After participating in New Visions in 2019, Emma Williamson decided to study industrial design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She says the program prepared her for college in a way many of her peers were not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been motivated to explore, take as many classes in as many areas as possible, and to use all of the resources my university has available,\u201d says Williamson, \u201cthings I would not know I could do if it weren\u2019t for New Visions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vast majority of New Visions Engineering students eventually choose to study a STEM field in college, Syracuse says. This year\u2019s cohort is already learning to navigate higher education thanks to a newly implemented mentor initiative that pairs each student with a Cornell doctoral student who can offer guidance on the variety of STEM majors, degrees and financial aid options \u2013 advice that is especially valuable to students who will be first in their family to attend college.<\/p>\n

And while college is still months away for this year\u2019s New Visions cohort, Ben Anderson feels like he\u2019s already there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is as much of a college experience as I can get right now,\u201d says Anderson, a Dryden High School senior, as he holds a turbo fan he removed from the plasma etcher. \u201cI\u2019m at one of the most prestigious universities in the world working on stuff at the nanoscale. That\u2019s just awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Syl Kacapyr is associate director of marketing and communications for the College of Engineering.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dozen people racing the clock are feverishly tearing apart a $65,000 plasma etcher inside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37026"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37029,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37026\/revisions\/37029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}