“How do you create a real passion for engineering?” Daniel McCarville asks.
McCarville is a professor of practice in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, who took up an academic role after a lengthy career as an industrial engineer in the microelectronics industry.
His journey began not on the bookshelf but on the toy shelf.
“For me, I really connected with engineering back in the second grade, when my dad bought me a rocket kit,” he says.
Fun can turn learning into an adventure — with the launch of a toy rocket, a child can blast off into an exploration of the laws of physics. For engineers like McCarville, that early sense of play transformed into a lifelong thrill of figuring out how the world works.
With that thought in mind, McCarville was intrigued by work underway in the in The Design School, part of ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where Craig Hedges, a clinical assistant professor of industrial design, had developed STEAMtank.
Hedges leads STEAMtank, a two-semester, interdisciplinary class open to all students that gives undergraduate ASU students opportunities to design and build museum exhibits to teach young children about STEAM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math, an updated acronym that reflects the need to incorporate the arts into technical education.
The program is part of The Design School’s InnovationSpace, a center that brings together students to tackle real-world challenges — not just as classroom exercises, but through hands-on engagement with industry, community groups and researchers.
A few years ago, Hedges and McCarville began to work together to ensure that both engineering and design students were participating in the program and to seek out community support. Their efforts culminated in the STEAMtank exhibition held at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix in May.
Read the full story on Full Circle.