Outreach with the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity

This summer Dr. Andrea Dietrich’s research group including Water Interface students Katherine Phetxumphou and Amanda Sain along with fellow graduate students Megan Ahart and Yang Zhao and NSF REU student Lauren Wind instructed high school and middle school students on water quality at C-Tech2 and Imagination summer camps.

The C-Tech2 program aims to engage high school girls and promote the future of women in engineering. The Imagination camp program is a partnership between  Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering and Roanoke City Schools for rising 7th and 8th graders. Both programs are affiliated with the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) at Virginia Tech.

Our group kicked things off with explanations of how the drinking water treatment process works, and what environmental and civil engineers do to make drinking water the safest, tastiest product we can. After a short lesson on the economics of tap water vs. bottled water, we moved right on to the explanation of how slow sand filters and rapid sand filters work. Last but certainly not least, we gave students the chance to put what they learned into practice by making their own slow sand filters!

After constructing their filters, the campers tested them with some very dirty water. At the end of the hour, we compared finished waters to see whose filter worked the best.

See some of our campers hard at work below!