Women's Preview Weekend, Spring 2013
Virginia Tech's College of Engineering hosts an event for prospective incoming female engineering students for one weekend every spring semester which allows students to get a feel for what being a first-year student at Virginia Tech is like. As a volunteer for Women's Preview Weekend, I served as a TA for the "Mock Workshop", which is an introduction/demonstration of how workshops are typically conducted during the first-year engineering courses. Following the workshop I answered students' questions about Virginia Tech's engineering program, as well as more general questions about being a Virginia Tech undergraduate student.
Kids Tech University, 2010-2012
One of my first experiences with educational outreach was Kids Tech University during my masters program. Kids Tech University is a wonderful organization that gets together researchers to host educational workshops that are based on their research field for 450 9-12 year old students from Southwest Virginia. My responsibility as a volunteer was to assist with handing out materials, and assisting students with any questions they might have during the interactive activity. This experience was one of the catalysts that lead me to engineering education as a career, because I met doctoral students from the Engineering Education department, and I also realized how much I enjoyed the educational and outreach aspects of science and engineering.
FLL 2011
I also had the opportunity to serve as a judge for the 2011 FIRST LEGO League Christiansburg regional. This was a really fun experience, seeing how creative and enthusiastic young students can be with engineering design. Similar to KTU, this experience also exposed me to ENGE doctoral students, as well as my passion towards engineering education. It was so refreshing to see how excited young students can get while learning about engineering design and control systems.
Outreach
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View my LinkedIn profileCurriculum Vitae | Stephanie M. Kusano | skusano@vt.edu