PVAMU Summer 2022 Outreach Recap
On Saturday, April 23, 2022, PVAMU hosted their Pantherland Signing Day Event which is a campus-wide academic and service preview day for our newly admitted fall 2022 freshmen and transfer students and their families. The purpose of this event is to provide our newly admitted Panthers and parents an opportunity to preview their academic departments, tour campus and housing facilities, and receive valuable information about the next steps in the enrollment process.
Five of the QCAM undergraduate students (Ty Dupre, Angel Randall, Jia Thomas, Daniel Olumoroti, and Jarrell Reynolds) attended the event and interacted with about 50 students and parents by introducing them to additive manufacturing and demonstrating the 3D printing process to them.
The team set up the printer to print a single Jordan shoe, which was a detailed print that drew attention of young students. The booth also contained premade models which included an “among us crewmate” (from a popular mobile game), an octopus with moving legs, a lucky cat, a spaceship, and an expanded John Wick spy-coin. The purpose of these model displays was to show the variety and detail that could be accomplished with polymer additive manufacturing. The team also displayed ther Nylon 12 prototype flange from PV capstone project sponsored by Kansas City National Security Center. All prints were taken very well with the people who came to speak with the students at the booth. Students could compare between the models created and learned more about the significance of additive manufacturing and its applications in the engineering discipline. Using thermal camera, students could get a sense of temperature gradient in the 3D printing machine.
Later in the summer, 10 undergraduate QCAM students were involved in the Halliburton’s Girls Techno Summer Camp. This Camp involved fifteen talented female high school students who are interested in STEM education. These participants were soon-to-be high school juniors. Among many activities, there was a program named ‘robotic fundamentals’ where students were exposed to an educational modular robot called ‘clicbot’.
QCAM’s contribution to this camp was an activity where students programmed the clicbot to stack 3D-printed objects as a competition. QCAM undergraduate students were given a task to print stackable objects within 2x2x2in3 volume and the demonstration of 3D printing process to Summer Camp participants was completed by QCAM undergraduate students.
Lastly, in July, QCAM was featured in the College of Engineering Enhancement Institute (CE2I). CE2I is an innovative and intensive summer bridge-to-college program designed to prepare students for the rigors of an engineering curriculum and to aid the transition between high school and college. The QCAM team presented at one of the project sessions of the program on July 19th. The session included a lecture and demonstration of the 3D printing process using a portable 3D printer. Twenty-one freshman mechanical engineering students attended that session and were introduced to the QCAM project.
