Ballpark Provides Real-World Setting for Future Engineers
The Infinity Project, founded at SMU, attracted students to a ballpark in Houston to test acoustics.
By Jack Williams
It's a shortage that's getting worse instead of better, the lack of high school students interested in careers in engineering. Nationwide, only two out of every 100 high school graduates go on to earn engineering degrees. A program aimed at changing those numbers used minute maid park recently to show local middle school students real world engineering applications. Jack Williams was there:
"Bailey students stay over here."
Instead of ballplayers on the field and fans in the seats, on this day it's groundskeepers mowing the grass and curious students from Bailey Middle School in Spring ready to learn.
"At this time, please go ahead and start your program and hold up your poster board when you're ready."
The students scatter throughout the empty stadium, each group with laptops, some in the upper deck, some in the Crawford
Boxes, others behind home plate. They're part of a sound engineering project to determine which seat is the best to hear stadium announcements if you're hearing impaired.
"Alright, here we go. Strike."
The field trip is part of the Infinity Project, a program started about 10 years ago to get high school and middle school students more interested in careers in engineering, math and science. Veronica Vijil is the principal at Bailey Middle School.
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