[pause]
Maureen Blazer-Adams: If you had a chance
to walk around, you'll see a lot of energy
and a lot of chaos.
We've got college students: underclassmen,
doing competitions, presentations of design
projects; we've got the seniors which are
our headliners of the day doing their capstone
presentations.
>> Bill Zajac: We were teamed up with GE Aviation
and our project was to create the next-generation
flight deck.
Ours is actually more graphically relevant,
it's more pleasing to the eye.
It actually has a lot more cross-functional
systems.
You can actually have a bunch of screens set
up in front of the pilot instead of just a
whole bunch of dials.
There's a lot more information in a much more
easy to digest format.
>> Harold Hill: I'm a mechanical engineer,
so we kind of designed a new headrest: it's
like a hemispherical headrest.
We call it the hemi-headrest, with Chrysler
of course.
It has user-activated wings, so I can push
these wings in, lock them into place when
I don't need to rest off to the side or anything
on long road trips.
Then we have a tab in the back where you press,
the wings shoot out, and now I can sleep on
the road and you know, I'm comfortable.
So that's our project, and I'm going to be
working with Chrysler next year, so I'll be
seeing real-world activity pretty soon.
>> Courtney MacDonald: So we were looking
at ways that homeowners could insulate their
existing basements themselves without having
to go through the whole framing route--to
make the stud wall, make the frames, and then
add insulation, because that can be quite
expensive and time-consuming.
>> ADAMS: So we were looking at two different
ways that we could make that installation
system quite a bit easier.
Se we do a lot of crossover and try to see
that they would have to be working with other
individuals when they're out in the workforce,
and they're going to have to work on teams
that maybe aren't all necessarily their common
ground.
>> MacDonald: It's not just engineering, technical
all the time.
It's interfacing with business, it's different
degrees--it's not just mechanical engineers,
for example.
We had to work with some electricals and we
had to do all sorts of interdisciplinary and
more "Renaissance Man"-type engineering instead
of just focusing on one narrow subject.
That's more of the real world instead of just
our little pocket that we do in school.
This has really kind of been the culmination
of four years of education.
I really think it kind of tied everything
together.
>> ZAJAC: It was a really great experience
to actually be able to go out there, have
a client interaction, have something that
the client really doesn't know exactly what
they want done, but they know what they want
it to look like, they know what they want
it to feel like.
So it was actually our ideas, our logic that
actually created this program.
That's what really is pleasing about it the
most.
