FAU Hosts Annual Engineering Scholars Program for High Achieving High School Students
Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science hosted the fifteenth annual summer Engineering Scholars Program (ESP) for more than 130 high school students. The three-credit, dual-enrollment program in engineering and computer science is offered for gifted, high achieving high school students in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Suncoast High School, located in Riviera Beach, donated $20,000 to partially fund the program as part of its mission to provide challenging, innovative programs to students.
“The College of Engineering and Computer Science is dedicated to educating young people who will help lead the way in addressing the technological challenges faced by communities worldwide,” said Ali Zilouchian, Ph.D., associate dean for academic affairs in FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The ESP is a very challenging program, with a level of instruction well above the high school level. The students that participated put in the extra effort to learn and succeed in their classes.”
The ESP engages students in challenging educational activities not available in high school and provides them with opportunities to explore engineering and computer science as possible career choices. Instruction was provided by FAU engineering and computer science faculty. Team projects were emphasized and completed utilizing the state-of-the-art laboratories in the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science buildings. Current FAU upper-division and graduate engineering and computer science students served as mentors and assisted ESP students with the transition to college-level work.
The three-week summer program took place on the FAU Boca Raton campus. Students chose one course from a selection of five and received three semester hours of academic credit upon completion of the program. Classes were offered in electronic design with operational amplifiers, innovative materials for infrastructure, an introduction to ocean engineering, mobile applications on Google’s Android and new-generation Web technologies.
The program’s team members included: Zilouchian; Shihong Huang, Ph.D., associate professor and Ravi Shankar, Ph.D., professor, FAU’s department of computer and electrical engineering and computer science; Khaled Sobhan, Ph.D., associate professor, FAU’s department of civil, environmental and geomatics engineering; James VanZwieten, Ph.D., assistant research professor, FAU’s Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center. Student teaching assistants included: FAU graduate students Armando Leon (electrical engineering), Lillian Gonzalez (mechanical engineering), Matthew Herland (computer science), Oren Gross (computer science); FAU undergraduate student Juan Ramirez (electrical and ocean engineering).
July 5, 2013