By AUBRIE GEORGE
Last week was National Engineers Week, and Moorestown’s Lockheed Martin facility celebrated by inviting more than 100 local students to learn about and celebrate the field of engineering.
Over the course of last week, approximately 160 students from eight South Jersey middle schools visited Lockheed Martin for a learning centered event that aimed to spark an interest in future engineers.
Participating schools included Westampton, Eastampton, F.W. Holbein, Delran, Harrington, Hainesport, St. Mary of the Lakes, and Lumberton.
While at Lockheed, students watched videos and had the chance to interact with Lockheed Martin engineers who discussed engineering classes, careers, college and their own experiences in the field.
Students also broke into groups to participate in a series of hands-on, team oriented activities aimed at meeting requirements, managing constraints, and sharing knowledge — all necessary skills for an engineer.
Activities included making a tower structure out of toothpicks and gumdrops. The structure had to be at least eight inches tall and hold at least one can of tuna.
There was also a Lego® activity that taught students about production methodology.
Students also built boats out of aluminum foil and competed to see which could hold the most pennies.
All of the activities students engaged in were competitive and winners were given prizes including calculator rulers, flashlight pens, and binoculars.
Karen Erickson, an engineer at Lockheed Martin who led the week long event, said she hopes students who visited the facility walked away with a sense that engineering is not an unattainable future career.
“You don’t have to be a genius to be an engineer, you don’t even have to be the smartest in your class,” Erickson said. “You just have to like math and science and you have to enjoy building and creating things.”
Erickson said the annual event at Lockheed, and National Engineers week, always coincides with President’s Day. It starts the Tuesday following the holiday and lasts through Friday, she said, because George Washington is considered to be one of the country’s first engineers.
The activities last week at Lockheed got students thinking about their futures.
Ashton Eisenberg, a student from F.W. Holbein Middle School in Mt. Holly, said she was surprised to learn that engineering is such a wide-reaching field.
“Engineering is a lot different than I thought it was,” she said. “I didn’t know there were so many branches of it. It’s a lot more work than I would have guessed.”
While she wasn’t dead set on the field of engineering as a future career, she said it’s something she may consider after learning a bit more about it.
“It’s down a different road,” she said “I think it would be a fun thing to do given the chance.”
