This past summer marked a momentous stepping-stone in the newly founded Engineering Society’s history. The members of the club began not 1, not 2, but 3 Summer Projects. The 1st of which is one that will hopefully be around Jesuit for many years to come: a scale model of Jesuit’s campus. In preparation for accomplishing this tremendous feat, the Engineering Society took a trip to HKS Architecture. There they “received a comprehensive overview of model building and how it impacts a design, inspiration, or project proposal…” said Mrs. Carver, moderator of the Engineering society. President Michael Lanham said in an interview on Tuesday that the members, ” [saw] how the model would be built [and] also the tools needed to do the best job possible”. The trip was such a success that they have planned a second trip to HKS in the fall.
The 2nd of these projects was a wind turbine, which the society has very high hopes for. The alternative wind turbine is currently in step one, the design and research stage, of its multi-step process. As this project progresses, the team hopes to build a full-scale model to be placed on campus for Jesuit to use. In order to accomplish this they would need to present their model to the board, which Mrs. Carver believes will be their next step. Although Mrs. Carver does not know exactly when they hope to accomplish this humongous task her hope is that whenever it is finished it will make Jesuit a more environment friendly school.
The 3rd and final summer project in development is the pedal car, a fully functional adult sized pedal car that can be retrofitted with
an electrical engine and a solar panel. As Mrs. Carver disclosed,”We worked on [the pedal car] the most over the summer.” The frame for the car is almost complete, and the next addition to be made to the car is the gears and chains needed to make the pedal car functional. After the addition of the chains and gears, the club will then move into their final step which is retrofitting the car to be able to add an engine and a solar panel.
These 3 projects are all active projects that the the club hopes will leave a long lasting effect on Jesuit. While no more projects have currently been started, the President of the Engineering Society, Michael Lanham ’15, said that the goal isn’t to complete as many projects as possible but to “establish a tradition that will last.” While the society is just a club, many of its members aspire to become great engineers in the future. We will all have to wait and see what new and exciting projects the Jesuit Engineering Society has in store us in the years to come.
