Here, you can read about the various parts of Tech Day!
Group Leaders | Department Tours | Exhibits | Panels | Design Competitions | Campus Tour
Group Leaders
Throughout Tech Day, College of Engineering students will be with you and your group, leading you around campus from session to session. They are a great resource for you! They have a wealth of experiences and can answer any questions you might have. They can tell you about the academics and the social scene here on campus. They love answering questions and giving you their own personal experiences. Just ask!
Department Tours and Presentations
Not certain yet what sort of engineering is right for you? By attending Tech Day at the University of Michigan College of Engineering, you will be able to explore our engineering departments. High school students will see two department tours and three department presentations; transfer students will see one department tour; and parents will attend five department presentations given by faculty. Our department tours will give you the chance to interact with students and professors while seeing their laboratories and classrooms.
The presentations will cover topics such as curriculum, design projects, and real world applications and careers. Consider these tours as your first courses as engineers! Our goal is for you to leave Tech Day having a better understanding of the different engineering disciplines and what Michigan Engineering has to offer.
Exhibits
All attendees will have the opportunity to view exhibits staffed by members of College of Engineering student societies and project teams. Each society or team designs an exhibit based on its interests. Exhibits range from demonstrations of engineering principles to information regarding the society's goals, interests and activities. They provide an excellent opportunity to learn more about a particular field of engineering or what extracurricular activities exist outside the classroom.
Here is a short list of Tech Day exhibits from previous years:
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-A demonstration of the properties of materials by freezing a racquetball in liquid nitrogen and shattering it by throwing it against a wall.
-Working vehicles built by student project teams, such as Solar Car, Human-Powered Submarine, Concrete Canoe, and Mars Rover. Our Solar Car team has won four national championships!
-Computer games written by students for a class project, a student society, or just for fun!
Information about our student chapters of national engineering societies, including honor societies and professional fraternities and sororities.
Of course, the College of Engineering is just one part of the University of Michigan. Recognizing this, Tech Day also invites a number of non-engineering societies to participate in exhibits as well. For example:
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-Musical organizations, such as the Michigan Marching Band and the Michigan Pops Orchestra.
-Air Force ROTC
-Michigan Learning Communities
Extracurricular activities are an important part of many students' lives in the College of Engineering. They can provide hands-on experience in applying concepts learned in class, opportunities to gain valuable leadership skills, and friendships that will last a lifetime.
If you are interested in learning more, try the following links:
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College of Engineering Student Societies
College of Engineering Student Project Teams
Maize Pages (an online directory of U-M student organizations)
Panels
Both students and parents will attend panel discussions. The panelists include college students as well as staff from various College of Engineering offices to answer questions regarding admissions, career resources, advising, financial aid, student life, and any other questions you may have. They can give you tips on how to succeed at the University of Michigan and tell you about job opportunities for engineers. You can find out how many hours of sleep the students get during finals and how the residence hall food is. This is one of the students' and parents' favorite parts of the day: hearing what college is like!
Design Competitions
Every high school attendee will have a chance to participate in a design competitions. The intent of the design competition is to provide a demonstration of fundamental engineering principles in a hands-on, entertaining way. Students form small teams and are given a variety of materials to construct a device, structure, or vehicle that will accomplish a given task.
Here are a few examples of the past design competitions:
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-Teams must construct a tower using a limited number of index cards that can hold as much weight as possible. The winning team is determined by a combination of the height of their tower and the maximum weight their tower can hold. Teams in previous years have constructed towers that withstood over 100 pounds!
-Teams must construct an airborne vehicle that, when dropped from a height of one to two stories, lands inside a target without dropping a small "passenger". The team whose vehicle has the longest hang-time wins.
-Teams must design and build a boat out of a square foot of aluminum foil that can hold as many pennies as possible without submerging. In previous years, teams have built boats that have held over 250 pennies!
In past years, students have often cited the design competition as the most enjoyable portion of the day.
Campus Tour
As part of the Tech Day experience, parents and students will be led on an engineering campus tour by their group leaders. The campus tour will showcase student project centers, engineering labs, libraries, computer clusters, student gathering places, and other highlights on campus. The campus walking tour will give students and parents a general impression of the constantly growing campus and its many state-of-the-art facilities. The tour is interactive and the group leaders will be happy to answer any questions.