Getting back into ELL mode… For our first Engineering Leadership Lab (ELL) of the spring semester, we challenged each team to design, build, and test a working prototype of a sorting device, using only available materials, under time pressure.
About Engineering Leadership Lab
GEL’s highly innovative weekly Engineering Leadership Lab (ELL) provides a “playing field” that serves as the core of our students’ engineering leadership development. Students participate in immersive, team-based activities designed to challenge their assumptions and hone their leadership, teamwork, and communications skills. Each ELL focuses on one or more of the Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders, with active participation by engineering industry leaders, who also share their real-world experiences. These activities provide opportunities for students to lead their peers and serve on teams, while fostering growth and learning individually and within their team.
The bridge project was a highlight of GEL’s four-day Project Engineering course during IAP. Student teams tackled the challenge of designing a bridge to precise specs and building a prototype with real materials under intense time pressure. Instructors and GEL alums played the roles of govt officials. The annual course gives students a solid introduction to project management principles, methods, and tools in a realistic context.
What better way to spend part of IAP than developing a climate control system for an electric vehicle. The challenge for students taking GEL’s Engineering Design & Rapid Prototyping course was to design a system that quickly heated/cooled the cabin and filtered air more cleanly than traditional vehicles, while not using too much electricity. Teams proved their concepts by building and testing multiple prototypes, then presented their solutions to an “automaker” panel.
GEL’s highly innovative weekly Engineering Leadership Lab (ELL) provides a “playing field” that serves as the core of our students’ engineering leadership development.
Students participate in immersive, team-based activities designed to challenge their assumptions and hone their leadership, teamwork, and communications skills. Each ELL focuses on one or more of the Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders, with active participation by engineering industry leaders, who also share their real-world experiences. These activities provide opportunities for students to lead their peers and serve on teams, while fostering growth and learning individually and within their team.
These images are from the Structured Communications ELL.