Week 1

And so begins my second summer in the Mechanical Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Institute (SURI)!  This summer, there are 5 of us undergrads working under Sheri's lab group. This week was basically orientation week, we had MANY meetings all week to get everyone caught up.  I showed them my ePortfolio, and explained how to do it.  I got to give the Delta Design ASEE paper presentation to the group not only to explain Delta Design, which we will continue to work on, but to show how work can go to a paper and then a conference presentation, which they will hopefully get to do as well.  We went over all the different projects people will be working on (APPLES, PEARS, pre-PEACHES, E14, Epicenter), and gave everyone initial tasks. Since I have stayed with the research group all year, I already had some things to do, so I'm glad to finally really have time to do them.  I'm helping Helen with the PEARS school reports, so I created several graphs to better present the data in the powerpoints and considered how to do things better.  I also got to read more ASEE papers, mainly about entrepreneurship and innovation, and other random things.  And I updated my ePortfolio! I'm also starting to investigate a new ePortfolio tool called Pathbrite, so I made one to showcase my ME203 project.  We also got a new data set from Kat Steele from E14 this year, and if the use of worksheets improved conceptual understanding, which was tested with the Statics Concept Inventory.  Next week, I'll be diving into that data! 

I also moved this week into my summer dorm, which was a pain, but I'm all settled in now.  I also spent one afternoon in San Fransisco, where I gave a talk to a group of underprivileged high school students who are interested in STEM fields, which was fun!