As the tabletop roller coaster took shape, the youngsters built bigger and bigger vertical drops and loops with their K’NEX snap-together toy pieces.
They were having a blast at the Boys and Girls Club’s Intel Clubhouse in East Palo Alto. At the same time, they were finding out what it can mean to be an engineer—learning about laws of motion and general mechanics, says Christina Mayberry, ’09, a member of the Society of Black Scientists and Engineers.
Mayberry and a half-dozen of her SBSE friends head to the clubhouse three afternoons a week to work with kids age 10 and up. They’ve also brought aspiring scientists to the Farm, to watch Nobel Prize-winning physicist Doug Osheroff toss nitrogen oxide on the floor of a lecture hall, and to inspect the engine in mechanical engineer Chris Gerdes’s self-steering Corvette. “The rule is, for every five minutes [professors] talk, they have to do a 10-minute demonstration of some sort,” says Samuel Alemayehu, ’08.
That energy and a commitment to community service has helped the Stanford chapter of SBSE earn its second consecutive “Most Distinguished Chapter of the Year” award from the national umbrella organization, the National Society of Black Engineers. That, and a quantum of ingenuity.
Take the clunker of a golf cart that Intel Clubhouse kids revamped last summer. Inspired by MTV’s “Pimp My Ride,” the Stanford students dragged an old cart out of a junk yard and let the kids have at it. But before they could paint the cart, they had to have a refurbishment plan and a computer-generated design. Before they could install a solar panel, they had to explain how it would work. As they designed accessories, researched prices for parts and checked out the chemicals used in rust removal, the young students picked up tidbits from a range of scientific and engineering disciplines.
The SBSE students had to impart some life lessons, too, helping the mostly black and Latino EPA students feel comfortable working together regardless of ethnicity. “We talked with them, one on one, and tried to explain what it meant to be mature and how to handle themselves in certain situations—like, don’t fear what you haven’t been exposed to,” says Mike Woodward, ’08. Soon, all of the students were working together on projects.
SBSE members are branching out into other programs, including tutoring students in math at Eastside College Prep and East Palo Alto High School. They’re determined, they say, to pay it forward. “For most of us, there was somebody that helped,” says SBSE president Marcelo Worsley, ’07. “And there are students coming behind us.”
