Los Angeles-area students in grades four through eight will now have an opportunity to learn beginning engineering skills thanks to the National Society of Black Engineers’ 2015 Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK) program.
SEEK, founded in 2007, is the nation’s largest summer engineering program geared toward African American pre-college students. SEEK’s free day programs will take place in June, July and August this year at 17 sites in 16 cities across the U.S., the largest number ever. The Los Angeles program operates from July 13-31 at Zela Davis Elementary School, 13435 S Yukon Ave., Hawthorne.
“We are excited about the continued growth and sustainability of the program,” said NSBE Executive Director Karl W. Reid, Ed.D. “We’re proud to provide this educational opportunity to 4,500 students this year, many of whom may not have engaged in this kind of learning otherwise.”
SEEK participants engage in team-based, competitive engineering design activities and learn science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts, under the guidance of SEEK mentors—NSBE collegiate members from across the nation. The ultimate goal of the program is to increase the number of college engineering students and engineering professionals among African Americans, a community that is greatly underrepresented in this field.
More than 12,000 students in grades 3-12, more than 18,000 parents and more than 2,000 mentors have participated in SEEK since its launch in Washington, D.C., eight years ago. The engineering design activities are provided by SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers)—NSBE’s curriculum partner in SEEK since 2007—and by other organizations.
Neville Green, NSBE’s national chair and the 31,000-member organization’s top-ranking officer, spoke about the importance of SEEK to NSBE’s new strategic plan.
“Increasing the STEM proficiency of Black students in grades 4 through 8 is a must for NSBE to achieve our primary goal, which is to produce 10,000 Black engineers annually in the U.S. by 2025,” said Green, who is a chemical engineering senior at the City University of New York. “Expansion of SEEK is a major part of our plan to reach that number.”
Expansion this year includes four new cities for the program: Birmingham, Ala.; Boston, Mass.; Harrisburg, Pa., and Los Angeles, Calif.
In addition to Los Angeles, SEEK will also host programs in San Diego, June 29- July 17 at Millennial Tech Middle School, 1110 Carolina Lane, and June 22 – July 10 at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, 940 10th St. in Oakland.
Students will participate in three different STEM activities provided by SAE. They will receive instruction, construct their prototypes, and compete on Fridays. The competitions will include an oral presentation, artistic design and physical competition.
The three projects include participants exploring the relationship between force and motion and the effects of weight and lift on a glider; designing and constructing a vehicle powered by gravity; and using a PEM Fuel Cell as the primary power source, student teams design, build, and test prototype vehicles which they must then present to an audience.
The Los Angeles site has the capacity to accept 150 students, and applications will be accepted until the program is full. Application are available at http://www.nsbe.org/Seek/Registration/2015-Registration.aspx.
A complete listing of the SEEK programs for 2015 is available at ourweekly.com. More information about SEEK is available at www.nsbe.org/seek.
