Students gathered around the professor, who, standing in the center of the room next to a pair of theater lights, directed them to look at the ceiling.
It was a bit of a tough request, as SJ Kim, associate professor in UNLV’s entertainment engineering and design (EED) program, had turned up the levers to display a beautiful and bright multi-color mix of red, green, and blue.
“What if I slide up all of these levers, I can turn on all the colors,” he told the group of Las Vegas middle schoolers. “Mixing all of those three primary colors makes the color white. That’s science!”
The demonstration, and the afternoon tour of UNLV’s unique EED program and labs, along with behind-the-scenes stops at the Bellagio fountains, the High Roller, and the city’s resorts, was one part of a new UNLV Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering summer camp — the Vegas STEM Lab — designed to introduce and inspire students to explore the real magic behind the city’s glitz and glam: engineering.
“We’re engaging young students who have absolutely no idea what STEM is to show them that engineering is all around us and that everything is powered by science and engineering minds,” said Emma Regentova, camp lead and professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNLV. “We’re trying to show them that engineering is not dull. We’re just a different side of the art that they see being created and exhibited on the Strip.”
After first visiting several Vegas highlights in week one, the students spend the next two weeks engaged in learning programming, microcontrollers, sensors and motors, embedded system design, and hands-on activities at UNLV, including building their own small-scale engineering projects.
As the middle schoolers gathered around Kim and the stage lighting, he set them up to learn about the concept of DMX, or digital multiplex.
“Let’s say there are more than 10,000 lighting fixtures in a big theater. Do you have any idea on how we can control that many lighting fixtures?” he asked the students.
Several students threw out answers, but one of them landed on the right one: programming.
“Yes! That’s what I’m going to talk about today,” Kim told the captivated middle schoolers. “We can hire 10,000 different people, with each person operating each light, or we can control the lights efficiently and effectively through digital programming.”
Liv Westmoreland, one of the UNLV student mentors, and a double major student in EED and mechanical engineering, said that camps like this help students to visualize who engineers are and the myriad career opportunities available to them.
“I think a lot of people don’t really know what an engineer is,” Westmoreland said. “We’re showing them here’s what you can do, here are the different fields you can explore. Today, they’re getting to look at motion sensors, and I’m sure a lot of them didn’t realize that the technology is made possible by engineering.”
Over the course of the three-year program, about 120 local Las Vegas students will see a side of the city they never experienced before. UNLV has partnered with the Clark County School District to ensure that participants reflect the demographic makeup of the Las Vegas community in terms of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender.
For Sopheah Rodgriuez, 14, an incoming high school student, the Vegas STEM Lab is her second go-round with a UNLV College of Engineering summer camp. She attended UNLV’s first Engaging Girls in Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (GUIC) summer camp in 2021.
“Originally, I had been wanting to do acting and theater,” she said. “But these camps have opened my eyes into different career paths, and seeing what the options are for me has opened my eyes to what I can and what I might want to do.”
About the Vegas STEM Lab
The Vegas STEM Lab is one of several summer camps hosted by the College of Engineering in 2023. The camp – offered to students at no cost – is in year two of a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning program to help local middle school students overcome prevailing beliefs that STEM disciplines are boring and difficult.
The interdisciplinary research team, composed of electrical and computer engineering professors Emma Regentova and Venkatesan Muthukumar; associate professor of entertainment engineering and design, SJ Kim; and educational psychology professor Jonathan Hilpert, purposefully designed the activities to cultivate STEM identity development and to encourage students to pursue STEM pathways.
All engineering-focused student programs, including other opportunities across UNLV’s campus, can be accessed through UNLV’s new Young Rebels Program.
