Vigilant Futures sponsors Concordia’s Women in Engineering K’NEX construction project
by Adelaide Z | March 2, 2011Concordia University is celebrating National Engineering Week (March 1-5) and to commemorate the event, engineering students are building a giant structure entirely from K’NEX pieces, as they’ve done for the last several years. This year’s structure is the space shuttle and will be the biggest project in terms of size and the number of K’NEX pieces used to build the shuttle. The number: just over 166 000 K’NEX pieces!
The week celebrates engineering in all its forms and shows future university students how fun engineering can be inside and outside the classroom. Concordia opened its doors this week to many, including potential students, to showcase their students’ talent and allowed them to get a glimpse of what the doors advanced education offers – something Vigilant Futures holds dear.
The Women in Engineering association at Concordia took charge of the project this year and decided to place special emphasis on the role of women in engineering to encourage more women pursue an engineering career. Their inspiration for this year’s project is Montreal native Julie Payette, engineer, astronaut, and honorary degree recipient from Concordia University.
The project is nearing completion as several weary-eyed students worked overnight to ensure the structure is completed by their Friday deadline. A few of us Vigilantes were lucky enough to be there as a couple of students mounted a cherry-picker with the shuttle nose in hand and ready to be crowned at the top of the structure. Onlookers filled the atrium where the space shuttle is being constructed and held their breath as the students ever-so-carefully lifted themselves and the nose about 24 feet into the air.
You can watch the video here:
Check out the pictures from the event on our Flickr page: Vigilant Futures Flickr