Students Revel in Engineer Games

While a majority of teenagers are spending their time enthralled in Suzanne Collins' popular novel The Hunger Games, some students across Southern California have attributed their time to a more civil contest, Raytheon’s Engineer Games.

On Wednesday, Raytheon held its 12^th annual Engineer Games in El Segundo, California, where students from Peninsula High School in Palos Verdes, Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Hope Chapel Academy in Hermosa Beach and Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, as well as high schools in other local cities, had their math and science skills put to the test by engineering experts at the space and airborne systems company.

According to those SAS experts, the mission of the Engineer Games is to augment an interest in math and science within teenagers in today’s society.

“The theme of our event is ‘Discovering Your Hidden Capacity,’” said electrical engineer Angela Juranek, who also served as this year's Engineer Games Lead. “All these kids, they have the capacity for higher learning and to do anything they dream of doing. Raytheon believes we have to make these students excited about science and technology now so that they can be the engineers of tomorrow.”

As Raytheon SAS continues to celebrate National Engineers Week, which runs from Feb. 20-24, Wednesday’s Engineer Games included kids from 35 local high schools, all charged with solving an engineering task in groups and presenting it to Raytheon experts.

This year’s task was for to create a capacitor, which could be used as a stud-finder. Students were provided with a partial circuit and upon completion of their capacitor, they were to locate a secret code hidden in a picture of the Mona Lisa.

Juranek said that it is important to build an interest in science amongst high school students so as to give them an avenue that deviates from popular fields, such as athletics.

“Sometimes, kids don’t understand that engineering can be fun and exciting and competitive,” Juranek said. “There are so many different aspects of engineering. It’s unlimited.”

And having witnessed the progress of the Engineer Games for over a decade, Juranek is confident that with each year comes a greater level of success.

“It’s working and the biggest testament to that fact is that this year, we had 38 schools RSVP,” Juranek said. “We usually only have 30.”

As Juranek maintains that interest in math and science has increased, some students feel that opportunities to explore that interest have not.

Brian Deemer, a junior at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, said that he feels the United States might be behind the rest of the world in terms of importance attributed to math and science.

“I feel like in other places around the world there is more interest in math and science,” Deemer said. “I feel like in the future there will be a lot more jobs opening up in science and the engineering field. So our youth should definitely be more geared towards that.”

Jason Kim, also a junior at MCHS, commented that opportunities such as the Engineer Games are few at his high school.

“I feel that the administration as a whole, they focus too much on sports,” Kim said. “That’s where a lot of the funding goes and they get a lot of the attention. I just don’t think there is enough focus on math and science, so people have to have things like this.”

“There’s no regular place to go or compete or participate in math and science. That’s partly why I came today. There just aren’t as many opportunities for this.”

Still, students in attendance appreciated the opportunity to build a professional tool in a professional environment.

Bridget Murray, a freshman at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, said that even though her team did not win the Engineer Games, Wednesday’s event shed light on a field that she hopes to enter as an adult.

“You have to think around the surface problems,” said Murray, who hopes to be a geotechnical engineer. “It’s about patience. You know that you’re going to have to mess up in order to get it right.”