Gifted and Talented third-graders who attend Bendwood Campus classes are learning how to design and build high-rise bridges like the ones rising just blocks away on Interstate 10. Texas Department of Transportation’s Jeff Volk, an assistant area engineer for West Harris and Waller County, and other DOT engineers held special presentations Jan. 29-Feb. 4 for students in Carolyn Morris and Denise Howard’s classes.
Volk talked to enthusiastic groups of third-graders on Jan. 29 about civil engineering careers and college education, bridge building design and construction, safety issues and even industry issues, such as the reasons for the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Students also learned bridge-building terminology and used handmade materials to build a desktop model of a highway bridge.
In separate but related news, Carolyn Morris and Denise Howard are recent recipients of 2007-2008 J. Landon Short Mini-Grants. Carolyn’s grant-funded project is titled Bridges: Connecting Our Lives and Denise’s project is Interpreting Graphs Using Data Collected With Electronic Probes.