Work-in-progress: Elevating Chemical Engineering Outreach Through Collaborative Efforts Showcasing Fluid Flow Experiments

Abstract The Summer Enrichment Academy (SEA) is a summer program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), which introduces pre-college students to science, engineering, arts, and humanities fields. Students participate in engaging, informative, and interactive week-long workshops to gain a preview of the college experience. One of the modules offered as a part of the summer program is "Introduction to Chemical Engineering," which aims to provide students with a preview of the exciting world of chemical engineering (ChE). The goal of the module is also to raise awareness of various career possibilities in chemical engineering. Students work on hands-on activities and tours of research laboratories. One of the hands-on activities is that of mini fluid flow experiments showcasing one of the most important topics in the realm of ChE: fluid flow phenomena. Improving the experiential learning of college-level students has gained special attention. One example is the creation of a desk-scale kit on fluid flow, aiming to facilitate the understanding of frictional losses and other fluid mechanics topics. University of Florida (UF) has created these kits as a special component of their unit operations experiments to enhance the learning objectives of ChE laboratories, introducing junior and senior students to the concepts of pressure drop due to friction losses in pipes. Furthermore, the desk-scale kits are also available for use in lecture courses as well as experimental demonstrations for outreach purposes. The latter can be used as a strategy to showcase practical applications of ChE among pre-college students, aiming to tackle the current decline in undergraduate enrollment in ChE programs. In efforts to combine innovative outreach initiatives with improved teaching strategies, both institutions have engaged in a novel partnership by using the mini fluid flow kit to showcase fluid flow concepts to high-school students via the summer program. The novelty of this effort lies in the ability to introduce high-school students to one of the most important topics in ChE via simple yet versatile fluid flow experiments in a safe and modern fashion. Experiments involve the measurement of pressure differentials when water flows through multiple flow pathways, highlighting the effect of pipe diameter, flow rate, and pipe geometry on frictional losses. Preliminary feedback from the summer program rollout indicates a positive reception of the fluid flow module as a mechanism for understanding what chemical engineers do. With that in mind as the primary motivation, the long-term goal of this collaborative work is to develop a systematic assessment method to measure how the experimental module is perceived by high schools. In subsequent iterations of the summer program, a pre-and post-module survey will be administered to gauge the understanding of important fluid mechanics concepts such as pressure drop, friction, flow rate, and others, as well as to assess the ability of the mini fluid flow module to have students considering ChE as one of their prospective majors in college.