Story by Melissa Brisco
Video by Haley Powers

Hovercraft bowling, rocket launch simulations and meeting with prestigious colleges and companies make for a fun and educational Sunday.

The Coppell School of Engineering hosted the annual Engineering Expo Sunday, Nov. 15. The Engineering Expo is a free event that is put on for high school and middle school students interested in exploring engineering and learning more about not only the classes offered at the high school, but also about the colleges and universities that offer competitive engineering programs and the companies that offer high paying and exciting careers in the engineering field.

The event took place from 1 to 3:30 p.m. in the Coppell High School commons and had an estimated 3000 guests in attendance.

“The Expo is obviously pretty big this year,” senior design member Ricky Bureau said. “We have over 100 colleges and universities that are here for students to explore potential opportunities and engineering programs. Also, all of the high school’s engineering programs are here: solar car, fast track, underwater robot, sub orbital aero science (SAS), senior design and excite one through five.”

The expo featured numerous booths lining the main hall, small and large commons. In addition, there were two speakers that highlighted the expo: an ExxonMobil senior executive and Mark Penny, the project executive for Manhattan Construction Company. Penny was deeply involved in the construction of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington. The individuals manning the booth not only were there to offer insight about their company, university or organization, but also to answer any questions about engineering careers and opportunities.

The universities that were in attendance ranged from schools such as the University of Texas and its branch schools, the United States Naval Academy, Missouri Technical Institute, Columbia, to Texas Tech and Richland College.

“Cornell asked me to attend the expo and I was glad to do it,” Cornell alum John Pettee said. “Any school willing to put on an expo has my respect. This expo is a great experience for students interested in engineering. Nationally, there is a shortage of engineers, and on a long term scale, graduating with an advanced degree in engineering is definitely a good career path.”

Some of the big name companies in attendance were NASA, IBM, Frito Lay and General Motors. Also there were smaller or more local companies such as The Sham Group, NCH Corporation and Consulting Construction Laboratory.

“I went to school at CHS, so I wanted to come to the expo,” NASA flight controller Kay Standridge said. “I do not believe that it is necessary for students, but it would be adventitious and provide a good basis. There are many career fields for engineers at NASA. There are possabilities such as flight controller, astronaut, trainer, designer, builder, tester, analyzing manager or a variety of other options.”

A few engineering organizations also had booths at the expo. The organizations at the expo were: AlChE, Dallas Society of Woman Engineers, Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Society and Texas Society of Professional Engineers.

“The expo this year was surely a lot better than it was last year,” junior EXCITE student Meera Patel said. “I’m really excited for the rest of this year and starting up the expo for the next year.”