Currently, we run two programs, SPARK Saturdays and Mobile Labs, specifically geared toward high school and middle school students.
Currently, SPARK Saturdays is structured to be around 4-5 lab sessions, held on campus about every Saturday. Each session will last about two hours and consist of a learning portion and a hands-on activity, led by CMU students. The entire SPARK Saturdays program is held once every semester, and aimed at high school students. No prior knowledge on the part of the students is assumed. The sessions are structured to introduce students to a wide variety of electrical and computer engineering concepts to help them decide whether this might be a good career path for them.
Our Mobile Labs program is an adaptation of SPARK Saturdays, still geared toward high school students, but that we bring to schools. The labs are held after school on an average weekday to interested students.
We began creating sessions for the SPARK Saturdays program in Fall 2012, and held our first two sessions in Spring 2013. In Spring 2015 we expanded our reach to middle school students and local high schools through the Snap Circuit Lab and the Mobile Labs programs, respectively. We hope to keep expanding in the future. Professor Tom Sullivan has been the faculty sponsor at CMU for ECE Outreach since its onset.
In the navigation bar above, click on Spark Saturdays, then go to the Register section. Unfortunately, due to limited resources we're not able to accept all those interested, but we're making every effort to expand our programs.
If you are part of a local high school (staff, teacher, etc.), please click on Mobile Labs in the navigation bar above, then go to the Register section.
Yes, our materials are free for public use. If you do decide to use them, please send us an email or use our Contact page to let us know because we'd love to hear about how our sessions are being used!
Our volunteers are Carnegie Mellon University undergradute and graduate students who are studying Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Our faculty mentor is Professor Tom Sullivan.
We are always in need of more volunteers to do everything from helping run the sessions to creating lab modules to generating publicity to contacting sponsors. We'd love to have you work with us. Please use the Contact page to get in touch with us and express your interest and you'll hear back from us very soon.
Carnegie Mellon's Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning & Outreach has a great list of STEM-related and other programs for high school students, middle school students, and even grade school students!
Stefanie Garcia (the outreach coordinator for CMU's College of Engineering) is also a great contact for these types of programs.
If your question wasn't answered above, please get in touch with us using our Contact page! We will respond as quickly as we can.