Liz Kirchner
communitynews@ourvalley.org
In the auditorium of Radford High School, 175 students from across southwestern Virginia in Marvel Comics T-shirts, camouflage ball caps, Vans and glossy ponytails have arrived for TechCon 2018.
Welcoming them, Dr. Al Wicks, professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech tells them he has a vision.
“This conference is the first of what will evolve into competition at the high school level,” he said. “I see a high school stadium filled with parents and families watching technology competitions—autonomous vehicles, academic challenges.”
For Dr. Wicks, director of the Applied and Mechatronics lab at Virginia Tech, good knowledge is applied knowledge. His lab creates “practical engineering solutions by integrating sensors and microcontrollers,” applying them to everything from medical devices for children and digital signal processing, to golf club dynamics his messages to these high school students that morning are almost revolutionary. His premise is to “treat students like adults.”
Telling a story about hating French until he went to Paris, he said, “There is nothing you don’t need to know” and “It’s not about “As Bs Cs, SOLs…. It’s about what you can take away and apply to life,” and “it’s what you learn that allows you to succeed.”
He prepared them for the daylong conference crammed with self-guided presentation sessions like Kollmorgen’s “humans and robots working together” and New River Community College’s “Prototyping and design in industry.”
The TechCon 2018 brought together faculty and students from Virginia Tech, Radford University and New River Community College, as well as representatives from Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute, Apex Systems, TechLab, MOOG and Kollmorgen to interact with students from Radford, Rural Retreat, George Wythe, Fort Chiswell, Eastern Montgomery, Giles, Pulaski, Grayson, Carroll, and Galax High Schools.
The conference was set up like any academic conference. Kids registered online, picked up their schedules when they arrived, then navigated an unfamiliar campus to get from presentation to presentation.
“Students are hungry for exposure to relevant and “real” technologies and experiences,” Dr. Jamie Little, technology instructor at Radford High School who spearheaded the conference. “They can handle an event like this. For most students, attending a conference is a new and unfamiliar experience.”
And in the auditorium listening to Dr. Wicks, these young people seemed to have a vision too.
“The students from Radford and Tech that you see presenting today are only a few years beyond you,” Dr. Wicks tells them, “…and the future will come quickly.”
And it did. Everybody stood up and studied the schedule of sessions to decide whether to go to “LIDAR/RADAR How they work” presented by Virginia Tech students promising “a demonstration of these technologies” or the “Appalachian Energy Power utility apprentice program with New River Community College.”
The presentations appealed to both the art and the science of technology. While there was plenty of data-driven autonomous vehicles and 3-D printing conversation, there was also “Storytelling with video” from RU and “Hand-drawing with computer-aided design and engineering design” presented by NRCC graduate Brianna Adamo.
Adamo, of Blacksburg, at 21, is fresh from spending the summer working with NASA on a rover’s motion control systems.
“We draw, we model, we reverse engineer, we figure out what we can do to make things better,” Adam Wilson, an NRCC Engineering Design graduate.
Engineering Design Technology instructor, Jeff Hoffman reminded the young audience that the New River Valley is full of opportunities at Moog, Volvo, and Kollmorgen and mentioned a 20-question quiz that will help a person decide between engineering design or engineering to help a student decide which path to take.
Talking to a library full of young people, Hoffman’s message was, “It’s not work if you love what you’re doing. Find your passion.”
The four-session day replayed Radford University’s presentation of the “Where, How and Why of Piloting Drones” out on the tennis courts.
Not everybody was thinking about LIDAR and wave-point navigation, but this generation is destined for careers and lives driven and defined by technology.
Habeba Morsy, 15, a sophomore at Grayson County High School is planning to work in medicine, a field that will be heavily impacted by data management.
“I want to be in the medical field,” she said, “a doctor maybe or something in science.”
Her sister, 17-year-old Hajar, is planning to become “either a pharmacist or a physical therapist. Habeba’s CIS teacher told her about the conference. “I find it interesting, this new technology, and I think I should now more about it.”
Beginning as a seed of an idea, TechCon 2018 became a networked web of collaborators. Part job-fair, part academic conference, the idea started with Radford students who are enrolled in technology-related courses, then Superintendent Robert Graham extended the invitation to other area superintendents who in turn passed the information “along to the appropriate personnel in their systems, pulling in students,” Dr. Little recalls.
Only an idea six-months ago, part of a conversation among Radford City School Superintendent Rob Graham, Executive Director for Curriculum and Instruction Ellen Denny, Dr. Little, and Dr. Wicks.
“Dr. Wicks was inquiring about the possibility of some of his students presenting to some of ours, and the idea grew from there,” Little said. “Mr. Graham suggested from the beginning that we invite students from surrounding school districts.”
And, on a magnificent autumn day, drones are whirring around the Radford High School tennis courts overlooking the New River, and 15 high school students, the second batch of the day, are working in teams practicing lifting and guiding the skeletally nimble drones.
Coordinator of Career Development in Galax Sonia Truitt is standing in the sun watching students from Grayson/Carroll Counties getting the hang of gadgets.
“Technology – it’s a huge component and something we’re always looking to develop,” she said, “in the twin counties to improve and give kids the opportunities they need and deserve, developing this awareness of technology.”
Radford University students Eilish Bailey and Trae D. Price (“a name so nice, you can say it twice,” he said), both involved in drones as they are used in media were there to help.
Both are maybe 21 years old, not long out of high school themselves, but asked, “Did you learn about drones when you were in school?” They both laughed and said, “We had nothing like this. This kind of technology is pretty much a now thing.”
By the afternoon, instructors, business representatives and university professors seemed excited for the future.
“The conference was very rewarding for me. I saw how engaged and excited students were with each session,” Superintendent Graham said. “I learned that we need to do this more often for our students … to expose them to the opportunities that are here in Southwest, VA and how lucrative they are salary wise.
Asked “Will you do this again?” Absolutely!” he said.
Passion was everywhere, it seemed. Dr. Little said summing up the day.
“Both from the students and from the presenters, who were excited to share their expertise and passion with area high school students. One student commented that he had no idea that so much “cool technology” was right here in our back yard!”
