Mississippi Summer Transportation Institute 2009
Mississippi State Style
Drs. Truax, Howard, White, and Zhang, working with the staff of the Outreach Office in the Bagley College of Engineering, hosted the 2009 Mississippi Summer Transportation Institute (MSTI). A two-week residential summer institute focused on introduction rising high school sophomores and juniors to all aspects of the transportation field, this is part of the Federal Highway Administrations national summer program initiative.
In the third year at Mississippi State, this year’s program had thirty-one (31) high school participants. In addition to funding from FHWA and the Mississippi Department of Transportation, private and public sponsors of MSTI included Ergon Corporation, Mississippi Transportation Institute, Michael Baker Jr., Inc., Figg Engineering, Volkert & Associates, Florence & Hutcheson, and Mississippi’s Operation Lifesaver.
MSTI had three overall objectives:
1. introduce participants to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as they relate to the transportation industry;
2. provide an overview of the various professional and technical career opportunities that the transportation industry and the civil engineering profession can provide properly trained individuals; and
3. Provide opportunities for students to develop leadership skills and improve their work ethic.
The MSU MSTI 09 program will include hands-on activities that used the team approach to solve problems, develop of communications skills, and utilize the technology and STEM-based skills required into today’s transportation industry workforce. The curriculum included activities from the Mississippi Transportation and Civil Engineering program (TRAC™). Student learned about intermodal transportation, design of watercraft, highways, and construction materials. Participants also worked to solve simulations of real-life transportation challenges including intersection design, bridge design, and traffic management problems.
Field trips to transportation-related industries, government facilities, and transportation providers will expose students to real-world applications of STEM and introduce them to a wide range of careers in transportation. One field trip included a visit to Columbus Air Force Base were they flew T-38 and T-1 simulators, visited the control tower and sat in base aircraft. Another took them on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway to see how locks were operated, how transportation systems connect, and to experience a lockage operation while on a boat. Other trips included visits to Nissan’s assembly plant, Aurora Flight Sciences UAV facility, a MDOT sign shop, MMC Materials’ concrete batch plant, and Paragon Technical Services asphalt research labs.
The program also addressed an important component in developing a workforce that can maintain America’s competitive edge in STEM fields: leadership training. Mississippi State’s programs for developing the leadership skills of young people was fostered by a set of skill develop activities and the use of teams to solve project objectives during the program. Students even participated in the Mississippi Adopt-A-Highway project by picking up debris along a section of road.
