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FRANKLIN

On Sept. 26, students across Franklin City Public Schools, including nine in-person students at Franklin High School, participated in the first session of Virginia Tech’s National Society of Black Engineers Pre-College Initiative. The goal of this program is to promote awareness of, and diversity in, the engineering programs at VT, as well as the career opportunities for students who graduate from these programs.

In past years these students would have travelled to Virginia Tech to take part in the program. Due to COVID-19, the program is being conducted remotely. Virginia Tech sent kits of materials to FCPS to distribute to the students who were competitively selected for the program. The theme of this session’s kits was aerospace engineering.

The students who chose to come to FHS in person were guided by Guidance Counselor Dr. Marvin Jones and science teacher Patrick Lesley. They followed strict health and safety protocols, including being screened as they came into the building, wearing face coverings at all times, having disposable gloves available, and being seated a minimum of six-feet apart.

The students constructed air-launched rockets capable of flying more than 40 yards, and explored the concept of buoyancy by constructing aluminum foil boats and experimenting with how much weight they could hold before sinking.

After the experiments, the students had the opportunity to hear from current VT engineering students about why they chose engineering and VT, life at VT, and what it’s like to be an engineering student.

There are two more scheduled sessions in the program: mechanical engineering in October; and chemical engineering in November.