Engineering Enthusiasm- UC Merced Students Present their Projects to the Community

Innovate 2 Grow is the semester-end presentation of engineering student projects at UC Merced. Photo- Steve Newvine

They may have the engineering correct, but how are they at presenting before a group of business people?

They are engineering students at UC Merced, and this is the twice-annual Innovate to Grow project presentation held at the end of the spring and fall semesters.

For the past four months, teams of students have been working with their business and non-profit clients.

The clients come to the table with real business process problems. The students use engineering principles studied in the classroom to research and apply solutions.

Week after week, they have updated their instructors on their progress, learned new approaches to solving problems, and stayed in contact with their clients.

By the semester’s end, they must present their solutions to a group of community representatives.

This team of UC Merced engineering students presented their solution to removing small pieces of plastic from recycling systems. Photo- Steve Newvine

I have attended this event over the past few years as an observer. But this time around, I signed up to be a judge.

I took time off from work and headed to the campus to help evaluate the projects.

The day started with a showcase of all projects in the college gymnasium. Set up like a trade show, the event was designed to give students a chance to answer questions in an impromptu environment.

The event also gave outsiders like me a chance to see other projects in addition to the three I would be judging. Following lunch and networking with other judges, we were led to classrooms.

The presentations were held in two buildings on the new section of the campus: the south side.

These buildings opened to students in just the past year. It feels funny to describe that side of the campus as new. UC Merced has only been around a little over ten years.

The Innovate 2 Grow event included half-hour judged presentations by School of Engineering Students. This portion of the event was held on the newly opened southern side of the campus. Photo- Steve Newvine

Inside the classrooms, student teams made half-hour presentations of their projects.

Each team of judges was assigned to evaluate three student presentations. As judges we would listen to the presentation, ask questions of the students, then fill out our digital evaluation forms.

The engineering professor who coordinated the presentations used the judges’ evaluations as a component of each student’s final grade. “Look at these presentations just as if the students were a real engineering firm making an engineering solution pitch,” Professor Alejandro Gutierez told us prior to the judging.

This pair of School of Engineering students developed an app solution that created a sensor to help the staff detect the number of people in specified sections of the UC Merced Library. If implemented, the solution would replace the current process of having staff manually count the number of users. Photo- Steve Newvine

Presentations were divided into three categories: Innovation and Design, Engineering Service Learning, and the Mobile App Challenge.

The three student teams within the Innovation and Design classification that our group judged took this final assignment seriously.

They were dressed in business clothes and were well rehearsed for the formal portion of the presentation.

I was impressed with each team’s handling of questions from the judges. They answered the questions, helped one another by providing additional information, and clearly demonstrated they were invested in their projects.

One project we evaluated was a solution to capturing bit pieces of plastic that fall to the floor from a recycling facility. The students analyzed the project from a cost, efficiency, maintenance, and complexity perspective.

They discussed their prototype, shared their implementation issues, and touched on barriers to moving forward.

Mark Matsumoto, the Dean of the School of Engineering, told me many of these students are first generation students. “This is their first exposure to the realities of engineering as a career.”

Innovate to Grow, or I2G as it is referred to on campus, started in 2012.

It engages the local community by identifying real engineering problems that students work on to solve. Having the public involved as judges of their projects helps take these students out of their relative safe comfort zones on campus to a more “real world” atmosphere where they have to sell their ideas.

They also have to sell themselves as authorities on their projects.

As one of the students summed up her experience with the Innovate to Grow initiative, “It’s great!.”

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.

His new book, Course Corrections- My Golf Truth, Fiction, and Philosophy is now available on Lulu.com .

He will be the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Merced County Historical Society annual meeting on February 8.

Preview of Course Corrections

My latest book shares some fiction, some philosophy, and some Merced County History

Click on the image above

The General Archie Old Golf Course at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, California. Photo: General Old Golf Course website (www.generaloldcourse.com)

I hope you will enjoy my new book Course Corrections, available through LuLu.com.

In the book, I take my passion for the game of golf and share about thirty stories of my experiences, my imagination, and my philosophy behind the game.

If you’re a golfer or have a golfer in your life, this may be something to pick up.

If you appreciate local history, there are a few stories sprinkled in the book about Merced County and golf. Here’s a sample from the chapter on the man who led a historic military mission back in the late 1950s that started right here in Merced County. His connection to golf is a course in Riverside County that bears his name.

In the history of local golf courses, very few people will know or even care about the General Old Course in Riverside, California.

The course is on the site of the former March Air Force Base. The base was renamed March Air Reserve Base in the 1990s as part of the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC) that was designed to improve Defense Department efficiency. March now houses Air National Guard, Army, Navy, and Marine reserve units.

The land has since been put to new military uses in the ever growing southern California region.

This sign greets golfers playing at the General Old Course in Riverside County, California. Photo: General Old Golf Course website (www.generaloldcourse.com)

But the golf course that was on the base still stands.

It’s named after Lieutenant General Archie Old.

It was named to honor the man who played a key role in a little known military milestone from more than sixty years ago.

That milestone was the first ever around-the-world non-stop flight by an airplane. It is known by the mission’s name: Operation Power Flite. It happened in January of 1957. The mission made possible the first-ever around-the-world flight of a jet without landing to refuel.

Operation Power Flite, and I note the Air Force used the spelling of the word that the rest of us spell as “flight”, began at Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, Merced County deep in the center of the Central Valley of California. .

A contingent of three aircraft took off from Castle on a cold January morning.

One plane developed mechanical troubles and had to land. A second plane left the group, as planned, over Great Britain.

The third made it around the world. Thanks to aerial refueling, the jet could keep going for the forty-five hours it took to circle the planet.

Although the jets started from Castle, the mission didn’t end there.

Foggy conditions in Merced County led to the decision to land at March Air Force Base.

Behind the controls for the landing was Lieutenant General Archie Old.

Operation Power Flite was an important chapter in our nation’s military aviation history.

In the middle of the Cold War, the United States wanted to send the message that it could scramble a group of aircraft from any place in the world within minutes, and keep those planes flying for as long it would take. It was the kind of deterrent many thought would keep the Soviets at bay.

The 1957 mission was considered by military experts to be a significant development in aviation.

The role Castle Air Force Base played in the nation’s defense is documented at the Castle Air Museum.

The Museum created a small display area within its’ permanent collection to commemorate Operation Power Flite.

The story of this history making flight made the cover of Life magazine on January 28, 1957.

The story took up over a dozen pages in that week’s issue. The pages are so large that it’s impossible to copy a single page on a regular eight-by-eleven or eight-by-fourteen inch copy machine.

Magazines were much bigger back in the 1950’s; not only in the size of the pages, but also in the influence wielded in our society.

Magazines back then were a big deal. Life magazine, especially the cover story on Life magazine, was a really big deal.

Course Corrections-My Golf Truth, Fiction, & Philosophy

If you read the rest of that chapter, you’ll learn what’s in the future for that golf course.

That chapter is available for a free preview right now on the book preview page.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.

He will be the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Merced County Historical Society in February.