ExciTES Project at UTEP
The University of Texas at El Paso recently completed its three-week residential program for high-school juniors. Of the 24 students who attended, 42 percent were females. All students completed the full program.
The ExciTES Summer Institute encourages students from the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez region to use their knowledge, imagination, and creativity and apply it to traditional math and science problems. All the activities are structured within team environments. ExciTES participants engaged in a number of hands-on and thematic modules centered on these disciplines.
The creative highlight of the program was the Cardboard Canoe and Lumber Car challenges. During these challenges, groups of students first had to model their car and canoe with Nx software, and then create their vehicles with minimal materials and minimal time. Both projects were prefaced by background theory and hands-on activities to support the design, manufacture, and testing of the studentufs creations. The Lumber Car Challenge inspired the students to create a car powered by potential energy. In the Cardboard Canoe project, students had minimal materials: only a 4'x6' piece of cardboard, a 8-oz bottle of glue, and a roll of tape to make their 2 person canoe. In addition, students participated in college preparation activities that are always a part of the ExciTES camps. In this case, students went through the actual steps of applying to a college.
The overall purpose of the ExciTES program is to create a recruitment tool that creatively incorporates technical-learning activities. Program organizers will apply the lessons they learned during this first session to future sessions.
In other programs, 30 local students will have the opportunity to participate in a two-week, non-residential introductory computer science institute at UTEP in a program modeled after the highly successful PREP programs. Twenty-five additional students will participate in a three-week intensive residential HPC institute at UTEP, a program which will include computer and math classes, hands-on projects, college preparation workshops, and team-based activities. The Institute will be taught by UTEP faculty and students and local high-school teachers.