Mississippi Power celebrates National Engineering Week with multiple events

For several area high school students, the road to a career in engineering may have begun this week at the Mississippi Power Operations Center.

It could’ve been Tuesday’s “Watts Engineering?” seminar featuring high school juniors and seniors from Gulfport and Bay St. Louis. The students took part in a number of activities and learned the technical ins and outs of how the company operates.

“I’ve always enjoyed building things,” said Gulfport High junior Alexander Hopkins. “I’ve always been good at math and science, so that’s peaked my interest in engineering. I wanted real world experience.”

His instructor, Gulfport Robotics team coach Clint Brawley, saw the project as the perfect opportunity to show his students the symbiotic relationship between robotics and engineering.

“We try to get our students out to see as much local industry as possible,” said Brawley. “In our classes, we use robotics to teach engineering principles. We brought 13 students. I wish we could’ve brought the whole class.”

Or maybe the seeds of an engineering career were planted on Wednesday with girl power as the theme of the fourth annual iCan Girls in Engineering event. Twenty ninth graders from West Harrison High School built motorized cars, designed high heel shoes, ran electric currents through Play-Doh, and even concocted homemade lip gloss….all in the name of engineering.

“We’re showing them fun examples of engineering,” said distribution engineer Samantha Prine. “We want to show them that we’re not just doing technical stuff. We also have fun at our jobs. Engineering careers are not really pushed on girls. My mom was an engineer, and unless you know one, you really don’t think about it.”

That’s why the seminar featured Chastity Barber, a Harrison Central High School senior who plans to study engineering at Mississippi State University next fall. She attended the very first iCan project four years ago.

“I didn’t know anything about engineering before I came to this event,” Barber said. “After I was exposed to it, I felt like I could connect with it because engineers are problem solvers.”

National Engineering Week was also recognized at Leakesville Junior High during the school’s Career Day, as engineer Jason Belk fielded questions like “How can a bird land on a conductor and not get electrocuted?”

Belk, Genetrice Stevenson, and University of Alabama co-op student Miranda Lee were also on hand to talk with students about the math, science and computer skills needed to become an engineer.