It has now become a tradition that during National Engineering week (Feb. 28th- March 4th) students from Concordia University construct a structure made entirely out of K'NEX and display it in the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex atrium. This project helps to bring awareness to engineering and to involve students in an engineering project outside of the classroom.
This year the society of Women in Engineering decided to take over the project and build something that would highlight the achievements that women in engineering have made and to encourage more women to pursue engineering as a career. We decided on building a space shuttle to honour Julie Payette, the astronaut and engineer, who was given an honaray degree from Concordia this past spring. This space shuttle is the biggest project yet in terms of size and the number of K'NEX pieces used for the construction, over 166 000 pieces.
The space shuttle is 37 feet tall and includes the launching pad, the fuel tank, the boosters, and the orbiter entirely out of K'NEX. It will remain on display until at least March 10th. The space shuttle will be surrounded by poster boards with information on engineering, important female engineers, and space shuttle information.
On March 3, 2011 Discovery channel was at the School for five hours filming us for a segment they are doing on Daily Planet. They asked us about the engineering concepts behind the building project as well as what the importance of women in engineering is and why we decided to become involved in the society.
Concordia WIE would like to encourage other female engineers and would also like to congratulate the efforts of our female engineering students who were involved, mainly the designer of the project, Jessica Léveillé. The other members of our executive include myself, Genvieve Chafouleas, Victoria Kesslering, Jacalyn Bale, Wendy Landia, and Farinaz Hagighat.