The college sponsored the Panther Persistence Award at the first Wisconsin Regional 2021 Engineering Machine Design Contest, April 16. The virtual competition, led by STEM Forward, asked high school teams to design and build a complex machine using everyday objects under the guidance of coaches.
UWM’s participation was led by Chris Beimborn, UWM EnQuest coordinator and STEM outreach specialist. Bill Selle, PE, past president of the College of Engineering & Applied Science Alumni Chapter, served as the event’s emcee.
Beimborn explains that the event required students’ Rube Goldberg-style creations to incorporate simple machines, fluid power, an electrical component and a chemical reaction.
Team members embraced the “try-fail-fix” spirit of the competition, Beimborn notes. “One said, ‘You learn a lot from the failures’ and another stated ‘Failures are actually successes,’ ” she says. “In the end, the scores were close and all the competitors demonstrated impressive persistence.”
The Panther Persistence Award was won by a team from Waunakee High School, who infused a theme of bike transportation into their machine.
For more on this event and a list of winning teams, click here.