By DAVID VITRANO

News Editor

(Part three in series)

LULING—Recently, the Satellite Center in Luling invited juniors from St. Charles’ two public high schools to a session aimed at promoting both engineering as a profession and the engineering program at the center.

The recruitment day was divided into two sessions, the morning for Destrehan students and the afternoon for Hahnville students. Each session was further divided into three separate programs.

One of the programs consisted of short presentations given by area engineering professionals. Some of the professionals came from the academic and some from the industrial realm.

The academic representatives included Gianna Cothren of UNO and Dr. Henry Foust of Nicholls State University. Cothren discussed the different tracks within engineering and the paths to becoming a professional engineer while Foust focused more on the particular curriculum available at Nicholls.

The industry representatives all came from companies with local operations such as Monsanto, Cytec and Dow. As one might expect, their presentation centered more on specific fields under the engineering umbrella as well as what one might expect working for one of the represented companies.

Although their talks varied greatly, the common theme to them all was the many variations and options one has available to them when choosing the field of engineering. As Bob White of Cytec said, “You want to find something that is personally satisfying.”

In another room of the Satellite Center, Raeanna Poplus, who is the Satellite Facilitator for the engineering and design program at the center, waited for the her prospective pupils, accompanied by other teachers and current students of the program.

After a brief introduction, she let the students demonstrate some of the projects on which they were working. Among them were a can crusher, which applied knowledge of force and hydraulics, and a bridge project, which applied knowledge of design and weight distribution.

The third part of the session took place in the actual classroom or work center as it is called at the Satellite Center.

Here the juniors got a chance to meet some of the current programs students or team members. The team members, along with industry representatives Tim Borne of Dow and Jonathan Richoux of Monsanto, showed the juniors some of the practical applications of the theories they would learn about in the class.

According to Susan Boudreaux, a School-to-Career Specialist at the Satellite Center, not only do the students get a head start on the possible future study of engineering, but they also get regular high school credit for physics. “It’s a lot cooler here because they get to apply it,” she added.

Apparently, current team mebers are just as enthusiastic about the program as the teachers and administrators.

“I actually love it. I like getting out of school to do more hands-on work. I love the experience. It’s pretty fun,” said one current team member, Andrew Brignac.

One would be hard-pressed to find such enthusiasm reserved for a normal high school physics course.