ITE STEM Outreach Competition Southern California

ITE SoCal section conducted did a day long outreach event at the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy, which is a high school that offers students an opportunity to focus in urban planning and design. During the six hour day, our section members spoke to over 160 students ranging from 9th grade to 12th grade.

Each class involved a presentation about Civil and Transportation Engineering that used the concepts the students were learning in their math and science classes to relate their experience with the Engineering field, such as how the simple kinematic equations they have learned get used by engineers to time signals. Students learned about the wide variety of engineering right outside their door as we took a virtual tour of the intersection outside, from signing and striping to signal detection. After going through a hypothetical scenario of building a new arcade on campus by going through the planning, design, construction, and operation phases, they had the opportunity to do some hands-on learning. First students developed their own set of design plans and then experienced the challenges of communicating their design to others for "construction" ranging from the importance of units of measurement to the benefits of industry standards. The second hands-on activity involved some group work as they planned their own transit route and learning about the balance of equity, resources, and service. Every group tried to answer how they'd use a limited budget to balance providing equitable new service vs maintaining existing service.

This outreach was led by one our section ITE member, Ruben Hovanesian. The content of the presentations were created through the previous efforts of a dozen ITE student members, and the activities were arranged by two ITE members. With the support of Linscott Law & Greenspan Engineers, students received prizes for their group work and during the question and answer portion.

Credits to: Ruben Hovanesian