Since 1951, between Feb. 16 – Feb. 24, universities and organizations celebrate “Engineers Week” by hosting several different events, each to highlight the importance and celebrate what it means to be an engineer. The week is nationally hosted by the National Society of Professional Engineers.
Marquette has been participating in Engineering Week for several years. This year, the week began with a competition sponsored by Marmon Holdings, called Engineering Innovate-o-thon. Students were challenged to solve an engineering challenge in a limited time period and present to Marmon’s executives.
Some events included Faculty Flip — where the Engineering professors made a pancake breakfast for the students— Root beers with Engineers Trivia hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and Resume Review, where students could meet engineering professionals to work on their resumes. Some other events were a Hot Wing Contest with the Biomedical Engineering Society, an Engineering Job Fair and a tailgate before a Marquette basketball game.
Niko Rios, a junior in the College of Engineering, attended Faculty Flip and Root beer Trivia.
“It was so nice for the hall to just smell great and seeing all the faulty making pancakes and the students really happy,” Rios said. “It’s one of my favorite times of the year, I love seeing the events that are both faculty and student planned.”
The Engineering Student Council planned the week and helped decide which events to plan, while the College of Engineering pitches in, a lot of the organizations that host an E-Week event fundraise themselves.
“Some of the chapters host things like professional speakers to come in and speak about their work as engineers, and so it’s really just a weeklong to focus on, ‘Hey, we do a lot of good work in the world,'” Kristina Ropella, Dean of the College of Engineering, said.
For the third year in a row, Engineering Week hosted “Cake Wars,” where students are paired into teams and have two hours to make a cake using only homemade tools and starting with a basic sheet cake and cake icing. This year, there were six different teams of 3-4 people, who made their cakes in front of an audience.
Associate Dean Mark Federle said one of the criteria for evaluation is actually the tools that they create, as they can’t just bring in cake decorating tools.
“There’s some tools that have actually been 3D printed by our students. There’s a rubric and a a grading scale for the multiple judges, who evaluate them on the entirety of the process including teamwork, feel, fitting in with the theme, which is really just, does it fit within engineering?” Federle said.
Marian Fonseca, the president of the Engineering Student Council was one of the cake wars judges and has run the past three competitions.
As far as being a judge is concerned, Fonseca said it’s interesting to see people come up with an idea, but then have to change their mind based on the tools available. She said hearing their perspective shift and what they’re working on while building is also entertaining.
“Our cake is kind of like the setup of you daily life working with an Arduino board. You have the bread board on the left with the positives and negatives like terminals, and then it connects to an Arduino board that is powered by the computer,” Davina Lettau, a senior in the College of Engineering said.
For her first-place prize, Lettau chose cooking lessons with Federle.
“We were kind of worried because a lot of our 3D elements look a little rough so we didn’t expect it and a lot of people weren’t really sure what it even was because they don’t know electrical stuff, so we didn’t think they would vote for it,” Lettau said.
Ropella said Marquette tries to sync with the national week every year. She said the week celebrates how engineers make a commitment to make the world a better place and recognize the contributions of engineers to the world.
“We want them to be excited about their engineering profession and what they’ll do in the world going out. It’s nice when people can have some time outside of classes and research stuff to socialize and enjoy each other’s company,” Ropella said.
Fonseca said she’s appreciative and thankful for everyone at the college who supported ESC and the colleagues for Cake Wars and E-Week.
They ended the week Feb. 24, where they concluded with an Engineering Ball that hosted around 450 students at the Harley-Davidson Museum.
This story was written by Trinity Zapotocky. She can be reached at [email protected]
Connor Baldwin contributed to this report.
