10/6/09

Purdue College of Technology program at South Bend to host Project Lead the Way conference for local high school students.

The Purdue College of Technology at South Bend will host a conference on October 9 for high school students enrolled in Project Lead The Way (PLTW) schools in the South Bend and Elkhart areas. The conference will offer a day of hands-on activities for a select group of students from each school.

Organizers have several goals for the conference, including:

• Engage the high school students in some fun and interesting activities to spur their interest in engineering and engineering technology
• Provide some motivation for better high school study habits by linking the technical activities to math and science
• Inform students of the degree options available at Purdue’s College of Technology at South Bend and expose them to each discipline, to help them decide what they may want to pursue
• Introduce them to the Indiana University-South Bend campus, where their Purdue classes would be held, so they can see what college is like
• Link the necessity for a college degree to jobs in local industries

The conference activities are being designed by South Bend Statewide Technology faculty in cooperation with PLTW high school teachers to insure that the activities planned meet the interest level and ability of the students. There will be four activities running in parallel during each session: a computer graphics technology (CGT) project, an electrical and computer engineering technology (ECET) project, a mechanical engineering technology (MET) project, and a tour of the IUSB campus.