National Engineering Week blasts off this month on campus

Space Shuttle astronaut and engineer speaks to Lipscomb and Nashville students on Feb. 23.

Janel Shoun-Smith | 615.966.7078  |  02/08/2022

National Engineering Week will be blasting off at Lipscomb Feb. 22- 24 with a popular annual student competition, networking opportunities, a STEM-focused workshop for high school students and a visit by a three-time astronaut who logged over 673 hours in space.

Dr. Jan Davis, senior technical fellow at Bastion Technologies, former astronaut and aerospace senior executive, will speak to both Lipscomb students and 100 local Nashville high school students as part of Lipscomb’s “Rocket into Engineering” event, featuring hands-on engineering activities throughout the day facilitated by Lipscomb college students and professional engineers.

Nashville's professional section of the Society of Women Engineers and the Lipscomb Rocketry team will lead the activities for students, including a paper helicopter activity to demonstrate the physics of flight.

Students from Overton Engineering Academy, Goodpasture High School, Hillsboro STEM and Lipscomb Academy are expected to attend.

“In our senior design rocket project, we have specific guidelines for how long our rocket can take to descend, so we're giving the students a limited amount of supplies and a goal to have their paper helicopter have as long a descent time as possible,” said Brendan Nee, the assistant project manager for the Lipscomb student rocket team, which competes annually in the NASA University Student Launch Initiative. “This gives them space to exercise their creativity in a limited timeframe with limited supplies, just as our team does in college.”

“This activity aims to help the students exercise creativity and problem solving. They have the option to follow the instructions directly, but those that think outside the box will likely succeed,” Nee said.

The college’s rocket team will also lead outreach for Engineering Week at Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ Whitsitt Elementary. The team was chosen to lead Lipscomb’s E-Week events for school-age children because “ideas are most persuasive coming from a near-peer, a young engineering student,” said David Elrod, dean of the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering.

“It's peer pressure in the best way, to say, if I can do it, you can too. That influence, that role modeling is far more impactful coming from our emerging engineers,” he said. The day’s events are designed to let youngsters know that engineers are creative problem solvers and make a difference in the world and shape the future.

Guest speaker Davis was a Space Shuttle astronaut who flew into space on STS-85 in 1997 as the Payload Commander, on STS-60 in 1994 with the first Russian on the Space Shuttle, and on STS-47 with the first Japanese on the Space Shuttle.

Davis’ technical background is in structural analysis having started her aerospace career at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Following the Challenger accident in 1986, she led the team who redesigned the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster External Tank Attach Ring.

Before leaving the government, Davis was a senior executive service (SES) for three organizations: leading NASA's efforts to safely return the Space Shuttle to flight in 2005, leading the organization at MSFC for the hardware and flight operations for the International Space Station, and leading independent technical assessments for NASA's safety organization.

In other Engineering Week events, on Tuesday, Feb. 22, Lipscomb University’s annual Day of Giving, students will hold the second Rocket Car Rally, an event that was revived at last year’s E-Week. The rally is an outdoor race for pinewood derby cars decked out with model rocket engines.

This year’s derby will be held at 4:30 p.m. in front of the Fields Engineering Center and will feature an especially-designed start light that the junior signal processing class in electrical and computer engineering built in the fall semester.

Finally, on Thursday, Feb. 24, the college will host the Nashville chapter of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) for a free networking night. Typically, about 12 HVAC companies from throughout Middle Tennessee participate to meet engineering students and professors from Lipscomb, Tennessee Tech and Tennessee State University.