Students from Team 2590 Help Lead the Way at Rowan University

Glassboro, NJ - Seven students from Robbinsville High School’s Project Lead the Way program (5 of which are members of Team Nemesis) were invited to participate in The 2010 Guidance Counselor Conference at Rowan University today. The conference was designed to provide an overview of PLTW and training for counselors in active PLTW schools. Thirty guidance counselors and technology teachers from across the state attended the conference.

The Robbinsville students led three sessions demonstrating examples of what they learned in their PLTW class, Principles of Engineering. Each session started with a presentation that provided a class overview and examples of final projects. The presentation was followed by a practical demonstration – the counselors and teachers were challenged to design a bridge out of paper that would span a gap between two tables and support the greatest amount of weight. The teachers received some tips from the students and were able to make bridges that supported over twenty pounds by using only three sheets of paper.  Guidance counselors who were looking to add Project Lead the Way courses to their schools were able to get a feel for the courses and ask questions of students who had actually taken the classes.

After completing the three sessions, the Robbinsville PLTW students were able to tour the engineering campus at Rowan and the South Jersey Technology Park.  The first stop was the Virtual Reality Applications Center where the students were treated to a demonstration of the CAVE. The CAVE, a fully immersive virtual reality system that can be used for gaming, but more importantly, it can be used for problem analysis of remote locations.  Data is sent to the system and a place, such as an aircraft carrier at sea is recreated.  This is useful because the program analyzes the data enabling an engineer to identify any problems without flying to the aircraft carrier.

The next stop on the tour was a nano-engineering lab where students from Rowan were attempting to create a new semiconductor technology.  They were using plasma to create a material called grapheme, a carbon-based material that is only a few atoms thick! 

The final stop on the tour was at the FocalCool lab.  FocalCool is developing a catheter that cools the heart to help prevent cell damage during a heart attack. They hope to extend this technology to treat strokes and traumatic brain injuries as well.

The day at Rowan University provided students with the opportunity to peer into their academic future in addition to the opportunity to help teachers and guidance counselors better understand how Project Lead the Way will enhance the future learning in their own school districts.