Giving high school students a greater understanding about high demand careers is what GO CAPS is all about. How can someone know they want to be an engineer if they are never exposed to that career?

At the end of September, 22 students descended onto Missouri State’s campus to learn more about civil and electrical engineering.

Civil engineering

The day started with a tour of the civil engineering department.

After that, Dr. Matt Pierson, associate professor, performed an interactive demonstration of water resources engineering. A water resources engineer ensures that clean water is provided to all.

“Students get a deep, technical and qualitative look at part of civil engineering that typically happens in the junior year of college,” Pierson said.

Electrical engineering

Dr. Rohit Dua, associate teaching professor, started off his electrical engineering part with several interactive experiences.

Students got to measure resistance and learn about voltages and currents with hardware experiments.

They also learned how to convert numbers to a binary system with an interactive binary to decimal emulator.

Finally, students got to ride a bike and see how many lightbulbs it would power up to learn about power generation.

Dua knows that reaching a wider audience is key, which is why he is so excited to host these students.

“Using interactive developed tools and exercises, I believe we can expose K-12 students to engineering concepts, which are taught to our sophomore level undergraduate students,” Dua said.