Students gathered across the professor, who, standing within the middle of the room subsequent to a pair of theater lights, directed them to have a look at the ceiling.

It was a little bit of a troublesome request, as SJ Kim, affiliate professor in UNLV’s entertainment engineering and design (EED) program, had turned up the levers to show a fantastic and shiny multi-color mixture of pink, inexperienced, and blue.

“What if I slide up all of these levers, I can turn on all the colors,” he instructed the group of Las Vegas center schoolers. “Mixing all of those three primary colors makes the color white. That’s science!”

The demonstration, and the afternoon tour of UNLV’s distinctive EED program and labs, together with behind-the-scenes stops on the Bellagio fountains, the High Roller, and the town’s resorts, was one a part of a brand new UNLV Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering summer season camp — the Vegas STEM Lab — designed to introduce and encourage college students to discover the true magic behind the town’s glitz and glam: engineering.

“We’re engaging young students who have absolutely no idea what STEM is to show them that engineering is all around us and that everything is powered by science and engineering minds,” mentioned Emma Regentova, camp lead and professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNLV. “We’re trying to show them that engineering is not dull. We’re just a different side of the art that they see being created and exhibited on the Strip.”

After first visiting a number of Vegas highlights in week one, the scholars spend the following two weeks engaged in studying programming, microcontrollers, sensors and motors, embedded system design, and hands-on actions at UNLV, together with constructing their very own small-scale engineering initiatives.

As the center schoolers gathered round Kim and the stage lighting, he set them as much as be taught concerning the idea of DMX, or digital multiplex.

“Let’s say there are more than 10,000 lighting fixtures in a big theater. Do you have any idea on how we can control that many lighting fixtures?” he requested the scholars.

Several college students threw out solutions, however one among them landed on the correct one: programming.

“Yes! That’s what I’m going to talk about today,” Kim instructed the captivated center schoolers. “We can hire 10,000 different people, with each person operating each light, or we can control the lights efficiently and effectively through digital programming.”

Liv Westmoreland, one of many UNLV pupil mentors, and a double main pupil in EED and mechanical engineering, mentioned that camps like this assist college students to visualise who engineers are and the myriad profession alternatives obtainable to them.

“I think a lot of people don’t really know what an engineer is,” Westmoreland mentioned. “We’re showing them here’s what you can do, here are the different fields you can explore. Today, they’re getting to look at motion sensors, and I’m sure a lot of them didn’t realize that the technology is made possible by engineering.”

Over the course of the three-year program, about 120 native Las Vegas college students will see a aspect of the town they by no means skilled earlier than. UNLV has partnered with the Clark County School District to make sure that individuals replicate the demographic make-up of the Las Vegas neighborhood by way of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic standing and gender. 

For Sopheah Rodgriuez, 14, an incoming highschool pupil, the Vegas STEM Lab is her second go-round with a UNLV College of Engineering summer season camp. She attended UNLV’s first  Engaging Girls in Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (GUIC) summer season camp in 2021.

“Originally, I had been wanting to do acting and theater,” she mentioned. “But these camps have opened my eyes into different career paths, and seeing what the options are for me has opened my eyes to what I can and what I might want to do.”

About the Vegas STEM Lab

The Vegas STEM Lab is one among a number of summer season camps hosted by the College of Engineering in 2023. The camp – supplied to college students for gratis – is in 12 months two of a three-year challenge funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning program to assist native center faculty college students overcome prevailing beliefs that STEM disciplines are boring and troublesome.

The interdisciplinary analysis crew, composed {of electrical} and pc engineering professors Emma Regentova and Venkatesan Muthukumar; affiliate professor of leisure engineering and design, SJ Kim; and academic psychology professor Jonathan Hilpert, purposefully designed the actions to domesticate STEM id growth and to encourage college students to pursue STEM pathways.

All engineering-focused pupil packages, together with different alternatives throughout UNLV’s campus, may be accessed via UNLV’s new Young Rebels Program.