As part of a summer workshop hosted by Colorado School of Mines, 18 of the top female first year students from the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi participated in a hands-on “Engineering by Doing” course that was designed to allow the students to use teamwork as well as creative, critical thinking skills to design an optimal solution to an open-ended problem.
The campus visit was a collaborative effort of the Mines Engineering Practices Introductory Course Sequence (EPICS) Program, Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Office of International Programs, and Office of Strategic Enterprises.
The women visited campus July 20-Aug. 1. Between lectures and discussions, the students also traveled to Denver, the Edgar Mine in Idaho Springs, Vail and Colorado Springs. In Golden, students hiked South Table Mountain and attended Buffalo Bill Days.
“We wanted to create something that was interactive,” said Mirna Mattjik, Humanitarian Engineering Program Coordinator, who led the workshop with EPICS adjunct instructor Melanie Brandt and Corporate Social Responsibility Program Manager Benjamin Teschner. “We decided these students should have a combined experience of fun excursions while learning about User Centered Design.”
At the end of the two weeks, the women learned how to apply appropriate technical knowledge to solve social problems associated with the development of a mining or oil and gas project for client Ray Priestly (president of the Colorado School of Mines Alumni Association.) They also were able to assess the needs of stakeholders and incorporate their feedback into the design process.
Mines has collaborated with the Petroleum Institute since 2000, and through the years the partnership has migrated into cooperative research on an array of projects affecting upstream exploration and production and pedagogy in engineering education. Read more at picollaboration.mines.edu.
Contact:
Kathleen Morton, Digital Media & Communications Manager / 303-273-3088 / KMorton@mines.edu
Karen Gilbert, Director of Public Relations / 303-273-3541 / KGilbert@mines.edu
