UC Berkeley\u2019s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, or CEE, held its \u201cCampus Visit Day\u201d for aspiring engineering students from high schools in and around the Bay Area on Friday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first event of its kind for the CEE department, coinciding with the debut of the College of Engineering\u2019s environmental engineering major, new this semester.<\/p>\n
The college hosted almost 200 high school students from Castlemont High School, Skyline High School and Pacific Bay Christian High School to engage with undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to find the engineers that don\u2019t know they\u2019re engineers (yet),” said Kelly Vernon, staff director of the Community Engaged Education program in CEE.<\/p>\n
Bay Area students had the opportunity to explore the branches of engineering offered by UC Berkeley. One such student was Kayla Borowski, a senior in the Green Energy Pathway program at Skyline High School.<\/p>\n
Borowski explained that the event helped her explore her career options and gain hands-on experience alongside current engineering students.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a really cool learning experience to see what environmental students actually are learning, and how they\u2019re learning it,\u201d Borowski said.<\/p>\n
The students were broken up into small groups before attending tours of CEE facilities as well as mini lectures on engineering principles, along with hands-on demonstrations and activities, led by CEE student volunteers.<\/p>\n
Afterward, students had the opportunity to learn more about UC Berkeley and its admission process through presentations, and ask questions during a CEE faculty and student panel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is kind of a dress rehearsal in a lot of ways, but there\u2019s a lot more schools in Oakland Unified that we want to reach out to \u2026 schools all around the Bay,\u201d Vernon said.<\/p>\n
Maya Carrasquillo, the faculty director of the Community Engaged Education program and an assistant professor in CEE, said the purpose of outreach events such as these is to bring \u201cthe community to Berkeley and Berkeley to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volunteers helping with the event shared Vernon\u2019s positive sentiments about the day and optimism for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Today) was incredible,\u201d said Michael Henderson, a first-year CEE doctoral student and volunteer ambassador for the event. \u201cI\u2019m very hopeful to be able to (volunteer) again, but also just to continue to grow the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the event reached a close, Skyline High School teacher and chaperone Terry VanHare expressed gratitude for the CEE department\u2019s efforts in encouraging high school students to pursue engineering.<\/p>\n
She explained the significance of the event, particularly for students who \u201cmay be the first in their family to go to college.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo come up to a campus, see students that look like them, meet students from different backgrounds, it\u2019s huge, because all of a sudden they can see themselves in that setting,\u201d VanHare said.<\/p>\n
Building off of the event, the department plans to expand its outreach efforts even further by hosting another campus visit event in the spring and organizing summer camps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley\u2019s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, or CEE, held its \u201cCampus Visit Day\u201d for aspiring engineering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[184,2177,2173,2174,2180,2186,15,2172,460,951,2181,2182,2183,2184,143,145,144,2175,2179,2178,2185,2176],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area","tag-castlemont-high-school","tag-cee","tag-civil","tag-community-engaged-education-program","tag-department-of-civil-environmental-engineering","tag-education","tag-engineering","tag-environmental","tag-high-school","tag-kayla-borowski","tag-kelly-vernon","tag-maya-carrasquillo","tag-michael-henderson","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-outreach","tag-pacific-bay-christian-high-school","tag-skyline-high-school","tag-terry-vanhare","tag-visit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}