TryEngineering Summer Institute – 2024 Recap

As the summer comes to a close, we reflect on what we’ve accomplished over the past few months, and prepare for the school year ahead. For many students across the United States, their summer wasn’t just filled with sun and surf, but also with engineering inspiration provided by the TryEngineering Summer Institute!

The TryEngineering Summer Institute is an immersive summer program designed for pre-university students aged 13-17, to explore various fields of engineering. The program offers hands-on projects, interactive workshops, exclusive field trips, and insights from guest speakers and real-life engineers! Participants also have the opportunity to live in the on campus dorm rooms, providing a preview of what life will be like on a college campus after highschool.

For the 2024 Summer Institute, 333 students attended across three university campuses in the United States. 29 scholarships were awarded, with funding from the IEEE Foundation, provided by donations from IEEE societies, including the IEEE Power and Energy Society, the IEEE Oceanic Society, the IEEE Industry Applications Society, the IEEE Power Electronics Society, the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the IEEE Computer Society, and IEEE Solid State Circuits Society, the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.

On the east coast, the TryEngineering Summer Institute was hosted at The University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia. Participants were treated to a field trip with the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Association (SEPTA), through their partnership with AECOM. 

Participants also heard from some guest speakers! Api Appulingam, Chief Development Officer of Philadelphia International Airport, inspired students with her story about her career. James Burroughs, a Standards Manager for Siemens, also spoke and provided insight on overcoming barriers to do the important work of an engineer.

In Houston, Texas, more than 90 students attended the TryEngineering Summer Institute at the historic Rice University! While participating at Rice, students visited Space Center Houston, where former astronauts introduced the students to the world and history of space exploration.

Participants were also treated with several guest speakers, including Phil Bautista, the founder of Bull Creek Data and Senior Member of IEEE; Christopher B. Sanderson, Lead Service Sales Engineer at EATON, and IEEE Region 5 Houston Section Chair; and James Burroughs.

The University of San Diego, located in California, provided TryEngineering Summer Institute participants with an incredible view of the Pacific Ocean, as well as the opportunity to explore landmark buildings. Participants enjoyed a visit to Qualcomm, where they learned about cutting edge technology and toured the Qualcomm museum.

Participants also heard from several guest speakers, including Andrew Saad, a System Performance Engineer at Google; Gautam Deryanni, a Silicon Validation Engineer at Meta; Kathleen Kramer, 2025 IEEE President, and a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of San Diego; and James Burroughs.

One participant at the University of San Diego shared, “I enjoyed the opportunity to meet new like-minded people and enjoy fun activities in the city, as well as get a sense for the dorm and college life.”

In addition to field trips and guest speakers, the participants of the TryEngineering Summer Institute worked with several hands-on projects! Some of the highlights include Toxic Popcorn, where students learned to use the engineering design process to design a product and process to safely remove “toxic” popcorn; the Bridge Challenge, which had students design and build a bridge out of balsa wood and glue, and then test its strength by continuously adding weight until failure; and Glider , which taught students how flight is possible, and gave them the tools and knowledge to build and test their own glider designs!

A student at the University of San Diego commented on the value of the hands-on activities, stating that “they were great. All of them gave me a lot of experience and helped me have a better idea of what engineering I want to go in. I love that we got to do challenges all the time and not just lectures which can be boring.” (TESI Student, 2024). 

Participants also worked on a week-long project, the Sparking Solutions Challenge! In this challenge, students were broken up into small teams and worked together, with each student leading one section of their project. Together, they identified a problem in today’s world, and designed a prototype that would solve the issue! On the last day of camp, they presented their prototype projects to a team of IEEE members, who served as judges for the pitch event.

TryEngineering would like to thank the students, instructors, parents, university staff, and everyone involved in making the TryEngineering Summer Institute 2024 a success!