Samueli School Celebrates E-Week

Nearly 900 engineering students participated in E-Week 2014, organized by the Samueli School’s Engineering Student Council (ESC).  This year’s theme was “The Art of Engineering,” and all students who checked in received a Samueli School t-shirt. The celebration featured the Dean’s Pancake Breakfast, an Awards Banquet, 10 competitions, a BBQ and the annual softball game, pitting students against faculty. Students broke the professors’ long-running winning streak with a tie game. 

E-Week is an annual event aimed at increasing public awareness and appreciation for the engineering profession. Established in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the weeklong celebration provides an avenue for students to demonstrate inventiveness and imagination through a variety of events.

“This week is intended to benefit the engineering students, and if they take advantage of the opportunity, they can get a lot out of it,” says Liz Brooks, ESC president. “The week is put on to celebrate engineering and acknowledge all of the hard work engineers do every single day. After participating in UCI’s E-Week since I was a freshman, I can say it is continuously improving every year.”

More than 35 businesses set up booths on campus for the EngiTECh career fair, including Broadcom, Edwards Lifesciences and Northrop Grumman. EngiTECH provides students the opportunity to meet and talk with company recruiters. And about 100 high school students participated in Shadow Day, in which ninth and 10^th graders spent the day with UCI engineering students and built their own design project – a paper cup tower, topped with a tennis ball.  

The various competitions are sponsored by different engineering student organizations and include the simple paper airplane, the well-known egg drop and popsicle stick bridge building, to who can build the best water filter with just a few materials such as a coffee filter, sand and vermiculite. 

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) presented a new activity this year – the Mr. Engineer Showcase. Six contestants entered, and they were judged on professional attire, how they answered questions, a hidden talent and the results of a fan favorite poll. Each contestant received an entry prize of a tie and business card holder. The winner, Charith Samaresena, received a professional photo shoot and a gift card for the UCI Bookstore.

“This was an extremely successful first year for this event,” says Kim Bui, SWE president. “We were able to get an amazing venue (Calit2 atrium), we had exciting contestants, the judges were enthusiastic, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.”

Awards Banquet, Professors of the Year

BME: Professor Zoran Nenadic

ChEMS: Professor Farghalli Mohamed

CEE: Professor Farzin Zareian

EECS: Professor Syed Ali Jafar

MAE: Professor David Reinkensmayer

Competition Winners

Castle Destruction: Cameron Wong, Ricardo Noguera, Andy Mis

Rube Goldberg: Adam Evangelista, Melissa Ali-Santosa

IN-Tents: Amelia Meyer, Richmond Trinh, Brenda Maldonado, Alex Gonzalez, Cameron Patel

Egg Drop: Ava Moussavi

Paper Airplanes: Lance Takiguchi

Water Filtration: Jessica Begley, Melissa Quinonez, Janet Ortega

Popsicle Stick Bridge: Armand Terzian, Bo Lundquist, Sonny Nguyen, Martin Boyd

Rocket Paper: Dani Rioya

Mr. Engineer Showcase

Winner: Charith Samaresena

Runner - Up: Shalom Stevenson

Fan Favorite: Donald Morrow III