Nearly 100 Florida Polytechnic University students put their engineering skills to the test at the University’s first-ever Engineering Olympics on Thursday, Sept. 17.
Hosted by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the event challenged teams to apply their knowledge and know-how to build bridges, engineer buildings and race head-to-head.
“It’s meant to give students an opportunity to learn something new with each different club while getting to know more about all the great engineering clubs that we have here on campus,” said mechanical engineering senior Sebastian Anzola, an event organizer and president of SHPE. “The goal is for each club to host a discipline-related activity and encourage students to build the project experience, skills and activities they need for their resumes.”
These 10-minute activities included a circuits challenge from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a civil engineering-geared water race hosted by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and a tower construction challenge from the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE).
The SASE station tasked students with building towers capable of surviving a tabletop “earthquake.”
“The inspiration for this is the Japanese towers and temples that have been there since like 720 CE and are well-maintained, well-built and have withstood Japan’s earthquakes,” said computer engineering junior Kristian Nguyen, vice president of SASE. “They didn’t even have differential equations back then, so I think it will be fun to see the thinking processes implemented there.”
NSBE’s activity replicated the water treatment process. Student teams received a container of oil and colored water and then raced to separate and transfer as much water as possible while minimizing the amount of oil.
“I think events like this are a really great part of campus culture,” said civil engineering junior Jaden Brown, NSBE’s vice president. “It helps our small field feel more like home and gives us an opportunity to come out, have fun and be involved with a bunch of different organizations.”
For the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) challenge, one team built a popsicle stick truss bridge that withstood 42 pounds of weight before buckling.
“We spent the first couple of minutes talking about strategy because we wanted to make sure we all knew what we were doing going into it,” said mechanical engineering junior Will Kuhl. “I love competing and when I saw this at Club Row, I was totally signing up for it.”
Beyond the hands-on fun, the afternoon of friendly competition carried a practical purpose. Anzola said the Engineering Olympics was timed to help students who will be attending the 2026 Fall Career and Internship Fair on Tuesday, Sept. 22.
“This is going to help them work on their communication skills because they are in random groups, talking to strangers, like they will with the recruiters at the fair,” Anzola said. “It’s also important to have a project on your resume, and given the variety we have here today, they can take on lots of different projects to help.”
Contact:
Lydia Guzmán
Director of Communications
863-874-8557
