The Engineering Profession is seen as a holistic discipline affecting many areas of everyday life. Even though practicing professionals would not dispute the statement, it is often hard to convey the idea to preuniversity students, as it appears overwhelming and presumptuous. Examples comprising of many different subjects such as bridges, airplanes, and computers, are used to reduce the anxiety. But, these examples are part of everyday life and thus fail to inspire a new generation ofengineers. To overcome this problem, the University of Manitoba Space Applications and Technology Society is using a student-designed nano-satellite, T-Sat, as a means to promote the profession and motivate a new generation by making space accessible to undergraduate and graduate students. This paper describes the outreach presentations and hands-on workshops organized through a satellite design competition that have reached more than 3,000 pre-university students, university students, and industry professionals between January 2011 and May 2012.
The design of complex systems requires input from many disciplines including science, engineering technology, business, and law. Students from a single department are seldom exposed to interdisciplinary projects through classroom activities. Such multi-facet experience is obtained through extracurricular activities and design competitions. The Canadian Satellite Design Challenge was recently introduced to design, build, test, and launch an operational small satellite. The University of Manitoba has a team of 79 undergraduate and graduate students from several faculties, working together to design a triple pico-satellite (T-Sat).This paper presents some of the lessons learned from the first phase of the T-Sat project and insight into some of the benefits of interdisciplinary, complex projects on engineering education.
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