Active Projects

Open Design Competition:
A few years ago, Austin Steingrube started the first Open Design Competition. What made it so special is that there were no limitations to what you could make, how many people could be on a team, or who could participate.  Our goal is was to get students, of any major, doing hands on projects.  The competition is judged similar to a dog show by professors and local industry members.

One of the special things about the competition is that there were workshops.  Austin Steingrube taught students everything they needed to know to successfully make a great project.  We covered everything from programming and basic circuit skills, to electromechanical devices and hacking. The mission statement of the workshops was By the time you are done with the workshops, even an English major could build a robot.

We will be doing the competition again and plan on possibly allowing local high school and community college students participate as well.  The more folks we can get interested in engineering, the better!

The website for last year can be found here:  csuieeedesign.blogspot.com
Note that a few rules and requirements will be changing, and the site will reflect that before the competition begins (hopefully some time in October).


Community Fun Nights:
Engineering classes can be stressful and isolating sometimes...so why not relax a bit and have some fun!  This semester, we will be sponsoring a whole host of events from poker nights and bowling, to mini-project nights (build your own capacitor!), to a night out for pizza and a good time.  The real key to these nights is that the students get to decide what we do, making them truly the students' events.




ECE Department shirt sales:
To boost the spirits of students in the department and to raise some funds for IEEE to do different student activities, we will be selling shirts with students designs.  We will have a shirt design contest shortly, so get your creative juices flowing!



Completed projects:

Study Area Refurbishment (BC Infil):
A key study area for electrical engineering students is the "BC Infil".  Over the years, the space was left to ruins.  The carpet was shredded and pulling up.  The furniture was broken and falling apart to expose rusty nails. The sofas were stained and dirty.  The whiteboards were starting to break down. There were never enough chairs for the students.

We worked with our chapter of Eta Kappa Nu to get a $68,000 grant to completely refurbish the space and several more thousand dollars to get new computers and technology for the space.