Renaissance Engineers

Alexis Lanier,
Junior, Electrical Engineering

Athens, OH 21 October 2018 –

Going into this school year one of my goals was to get more involved by joining more clubs and organizations. With this goal in mind, I went to the Ohio University annual involvement fair at the beginning of the semester and walked through the endless rows of student organization booths. While fighting through the crowd of students, one organization caught my eye—the Renaissance Engineers.

After going to the first meeting and learning about what the Renaissance Engineers do and their mission, I decided this was a group I was eager to be a part of. The Renaissance Engineers are a fairly new student organization that work under four pillars: technical projects, educational outreach, engineering professionalism, and infrastructure.

Each year the group comes up with various hands-on engineering projects for its members to be a part of, while also focusing on planning outreach events for students from local high schools and middle schools. Coming from a small-town school of 60 to 70 students per grade and having no engineering experience prior to college, I was extremely enthusiastic to become a member of an organization whose goal is to reach students who haven’t had much exposure to engineering.

The Renaissance Engineers hold events such as Engineering Day where students from local high schools come to the Russ College to learn more about engineering, and also go to local libraries to allow kids of all ages to take part in engineering projects.

Along with the educational outreach, the Renaissance Engineers also break into groups to work on engineering projects such as a designing and building a hovercraft, robotics projects, designing and building a bridge, and many more. This year, we are also planning on creating a website, reaching out to other colleges, and working with professionals in the field in order to grow the
organization.

After only a few meetings, I am so grateful I saw the Renaissance Engineers’ booth and became a member. If this sounds like something you’d like to get involved in, the Renaissance Engineers meet the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month @ 7pm in ARC 312.