Engineering has been called the “invisible” or “stealth” profession. That’s because results of engineers’ work are all around us — in the roads we drive on; the buildings we work in; the food we eat; the computers, and phones and cars we use every day — yet many of us don’t quite know what engineers [...]
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Last year, 65 teams of Iowa high school students participated in FIRST Tech Challenge, working in teams to design, build and program robots to compete against each other. This academic year, that number has more than doubled, thanks to a boost from the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council’s “Scale-Up” initiative. The initiative aims to bring [...]
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Look up a list of “hot” careers, and there’s a good chance that software engineering is included somewhere in the top 10. It was at the top of CareerCast’s list of best jobs of 2012 and earned the No. 7 spot (as “software developer”) in a Best Jobs of 2013 list from U.S. News [...]
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IOWA CITY — Sustainable design is in. “Green” building was estimated to represent 44 percent of all commercial and institutional construction in 2012, and is expected to grow to 55 percent of all commercial and institutional construction by 2016, according to a recent report from McGraw-Hill Construction. That’s good news for engineers like Tim [...]
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I covered many things and wrote many columns and stories before this blog was born. Since I’m on vacation and out of America for the week (my Dobermans are staying at home with my house-sitter, a burly fellow who has wild mood swings and a nasty temper), I’m going to try keep the blog [...]
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Don’t assume that a student needs to wait until college to take an engineering class. A variety of Project Lead The Way classes are being offered at a number of high schools in the corridor, giving teens an early taste of the engineering field. Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids was an early adopter [...]
continue »FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) student competitions LEGO League A robotics competition for students in grades 4 through 8. This year’s Smart Move Robot game required the students’ sensor-equipped vehicles (robots) to gain access to places and things while avoiding or surviving impacts. The regional qualifier tournament was Dec. 12 at [...]
continue »Wishing on a star is poetic fun but it won’t earn you a seat at the table when the U.S. Air Force was developing its Global Positioning System technology nearly 30 years ago. And with ambitious stargazers such as Texas Instruments and Magnavox scanning the skies, Rockwell Collins, the underdog in the race, knew what [...]
continue »It’s a one of a kind event. And it’s all about the women. For the fifth consecutive year, women in engineering and technology from all over the world will gather in March to celebrate, promote, highlight and inspire one another. “The Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering and Technology was created to [...]
continue »When floodwaters inundated the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library (NCSML) on the banks of the Cedar River in June of 2008, the image of the building’s red roof like an island in the water became an icon. And later this year, museum officials hope their plan to physically move the building across the [...]
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