FINDLAY, OH (WTOL) - A local renewable energy company is helping to inspire the next generation of engineers.
The 10 to 12 year old attendees of a Summer Lego Camp at Findlay's Bigelow Elementary finished camp on Friday with a visit to One Energy Enterprise.
The campers, who have been introduced this week to rudimentary engineering, got a chance to speak with professional wind turbine engineers.
"Tell them what classes they took, talk about their job and why they love their job," said Jeremy Kent, CEO of One Energy Enterprises. "It's a great experience for them and it's a great experience for our engineers to be able to talk to kids that hopefully they are working with later on."
The campers also brought in their Lego robotic creations, and got critiques and tips from the engineers.
"We even had some builds that were working yesterday that weren't working today, and we said, 'you know what, there are going to be engineers on site. Let's ask them, let's pick their brains and see if they can help us complete some of these builds'," said Tonya Thorbahn, intervention specialist at Bigelow Elementary.
In all, the camp and Friday's visit is intended to not only educate these elementary students on what engineering can do, but that they themselves can do it as well, and maybe even turn it into a career.
"Right now as part of the Lego camp, they don't realize what the end goal is. But, to see an engineer in action and work, I hope that it pushes some of these students to go into engineering careers," said Thorbahn.
"Somebody has to build it, somebody has to understand it, and kids today learn entirely different. The idea that you have 12-year-olds doing robotics is absolutely amazing and ten years ago that would have been an unheard of thing to talk about," said Kent.
And beginning next school year, Bigelow Elementary will be launching their first Lego robotics competitive team, comprised of many children who attended this summer camp.
