Power Engineering Day

May 11, 2022

The college’s annual Power Engineering Day attracted a record 150 Boston Public High School students, who came to our South End campus to explore the exciting world of electric power and its career possibilities.

At this dynamic event, attended by about 200 people total, the students visited stations spread out throughout the college’s auditorium and lobby to participate in hands-on activities and interact with representatives from leading companies and organizations, including National Grid, Eversource, Nexamp, ElectroSwitch, Black & Veatch, Phoenix Electric, Qualus, and Mass Clean Energy Center.

The event also featured 10 students currently enrolled in the college’s ABET-accredited Electrical Engineering bachelor’s degree program, some of whom demonstrated their senior projects, and others who spoke with high school students about studying electrical engineering in college. The Electrical Engineering program prepares students for careers in the electric power and energy industry, including the fast-growing sustainable energy sector. A number of the company representatives attending this year’s Power Engineering Day were alums of the Electrical Engineering program.

This year’s event was the most successful since the first Power Engineering Day in 2014. The number of attendees more than doubled from 2019, the last year the event was held because of COVID-19. In addition, the 2022 student participation survey found that 67.6% of students were excited to learn more about power engineering, compared to 61.8% in 2019, and 45.6% could see themselves working in electric power, compared to just 33.3% in 2019.

When asked the best part of the 2022 Power Engineering Day, the student comments included:

• “We got to see how engineering works in real life and how it will look like when it becomes a job.”
• “The best thing was being able to witness the robotics invention where they used arduino and ultrasonic sensors to navigate the robot and send sound waves through the wall.”
• “The best thing was how interactive the demos were. It made it fun to learn about it.”
• “The best thing was hearing about how transformers and power lines worked.”