A Focus on Engineering: Transportation YOU Events
By Barbara Moreno, WTS-DC
December 2022
For its fall events, the WTS-DC Transportation YOU Committee focused on engineering and teamed up with international engineering firm, WSP, for two in-person events.
First, on October 14, WSP employees Mugdha Tipnis, Vice President, Local Business Leader, Transportation, and Jeff Parker, Lead Traffic Engineer and Director, presented to almost 50 first-year engineering students at McKinley Tech High School. Each speaker discussed in-depth how they became interested in engineering, why they enjoy working for their current company, and what projects they're involved with now. The students came ready with questions about the day-to-day tasks of engineers, and each received some WSP swag as a parting gift.
WSP continued its support of WTS-DC and the Transportation YOU program by hosting 15 Dunbar High School engineering students at their DC office to learn about construction management and modeling on November 16. Jameelah Muhamad-Ingram, Lead Structural Engineer & Deputy Project Manager, Shaun Pratt, Vice President and Project Director, and Andy Immroth, Senior Supervising Architect, at WSP spoke to the 11th grade students about their work on the WMATA Bladensburg Bus Garage project in Northeast DC (not too far from the high school itself). Students received a detailed walk through of the project, including descriptions of each role on the project from architect to electrical engineer, construction methods and a timeline (with photos!) of the project phases completed so far. Students and WSP staff held a lively discussion of the ins and outs of project management and how to plan to be a future engineer.
The Transportation YOU team is planning our events for the next academic semester. If you are interested in being a speaker or getting involved, please reach out to Barbara Moreno ([email protected]).