Challenge Activity
Women in Engineering (WIE) Day is a free workshop designed to introduce students to engineering and computer science concepts.
Students participate in a hands-on design challenge using everyday objects to build their teamwork, problem-solving, communication, testing, and design process skills.
Past Activities
2021 Activity: Rescue the Cargo!
This year, participants will get an inside look at how engineers design life-saving devices that change the world every day! Teams will work together to build a mini life raft, following the prompt below:
The National Weather Service is reporting that there will be hurricane-level rains falling on Moscow and the University of Idaho in the coming hours and have advised those in the area to seek shelter and have a plan to evacuate in the water. They advise you to not be dependent on a vehicle due to the risk of it being unable to run once flooded. Based on their storm tracking equipment, they estimate that the center of the storm will arrive in 1 hour 45 minutes. The rain will begin to fall much sooner than that however.
You and your friends begin to plan to build a raft to evacuate.
Fall 2020 — “Computer Science” Challenge
The challenge for WIE Day 2020 used MIT’s Scratch to walk students through the basics of coding.
Fall 2019 — “A Zombie Got My Leg” Challenge
The challenge for WIE Day 2019 asked students to come up with new solutions using everyday materials to design and build a prosthetic leg.
Students act as engineers during an imaginary disaster in which a group member's leg was amputated in order to survive a zombie attack.
Teams designed and fabricated a replacement prosthetic limb using given specific starting material and limited additional supplies, similar to how engineers design for individuals while working within constraints.
Prototypes were tested against required specifications.
A presentation following the challenge covered new innovations in prosthetic technology from a biomedical and robotic standpoint as well as research going on right now in the U of I College of Engineering.
