K-12 Outreach

An important part of the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering’s mission is to cultivate and engage our communities. Our outreach staff works with students of all ages to provide support for STEM activities, learning, and partnerships across Colorado.

Mechanical Engineering

Summer Programs

Join CSU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering for two highly interactive summer programs, for middle school and high school students interested in exploring the wonders of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Support for

Colorado educators

We want to help educators from Colorado, the west, and around the world with their efforts to teach STEM to their students. This section features information for teachers, counselors, and other educators who need resources to be successful.

Engineering math

Engineering uses a great deal of math, and often uses it in specific ways. Engineers use a combination of algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and higher math to create the world we inhabit.

ENcourage Engineering Math Program

The ENcourage Engineering Math Program is a summer program intended to help incoming engineering students who did not place “calculus ready” through the math placement tool to improve pre-calculus math skills.

CSU Math Placement Tool

Students will take the math placement tool to find out if they are ready to take calculus in their first year, with the possibility of placing out of the pre-calculus modules and into calculus.

Explaining Engineering Majors

Explaining the differences between engineering majors, and even what those types of engineers do, can be challenging. Our short overviews of the college and each major may help.

Need printed copies of the materials?

Email our staff if you are interested in having paper copies of the resources we feature.

Teaching how to

Normalize Failure

Engineers love to break things. We bend reinforced concrete beams until they crack, cyclically smash polymer samples for knee replacements, red-line engines until they seize, and overload electrical circuits.

Why do engineers break things? An engineer’s job is to find all the ways things can fail so that when the public uses products, they are reliable and safe.

Failure is crucial for both engineering design and learning. Our brains tend to simplify information, leading to errors in our understanding. We often assume that all problems can be solved using a simple approach, but as we encounter new challenges, we realize that our initial understanding falls short.

This failure allows you to identify a conceptual gap and fill it in with improved understanding. Ultimately, both engineering design and learning aim to build robust understanding through ongoing testing, failure, and improvement.

Dan Baker
Teaching Associate Professor, Common First-year