About Schaefer’s outreach program, Makers+Shakers

Makers+Shakers is an outreach program that introduces junior high school students to structural engineering at a pivotal time in their academic careers.

Using K’nex + a shake table programmed with real earthquake data, students collaborate on solutions to an engineer’s real-world project scope. We believe this hands-on experience can inspire students to investigate structural engineering as a career – in time to complete high school-level courses required to enter many engineering colleges.

We provide our program resources at no cost so that you can start your own program in your community. Together, we can engage the next generation of structural engineers!

Why we offer this outreach program

We want to introduce students to structural engineering at the right time for them in order to make a difference in our industry.

Structural engineering needs to be viewed as a potential career path – so many students don’t become acquainted with it until it’s prohibitive to change their educational pursuits.
We have the opportunity to encourage diversity in our field – we know that teams, firms + industries evolve + thrive with diversity.
Current forecasts show that demand will outpace the current trajectory of professionals in the industry.
We want to show that structural engineering is as high-tech as some of the other related fields, and that we are creative + problem solvers.

The first step is introducing structural engineering as a profession.

What we love about Makers+Shakers

Using K’nex, we can identify column elements, beam elements, brace elements, etc. – it’s a great way to visualize a structure in its barebones state. The shake table helps to idealize the ground motion during an earthquake and how structures respond to that.

Students can build structures quickly, they can fail fast, and they can figure out what works (+ what doesn’t) for the set of problems we give them. We get to tap into the kids’ interest of tangible, hands-on building activities and at the same time showcase structural engineers as being creative, high-tech + dynamic. It makes the idea of engineering accessible.

Hands-on learning is very powerful in STEM education, because a lot of the concepts that we have are relatively abstract. When students see their structures fail, they get to try to rebuild it in a better way, using a lot of critical thinking + creativity. The reward + retention is greater.

And all of this can be accomplished in just one or two short sessions.

What our volunteers love about the program

Marshall Carman

[1] Anytime you get a 12 or 13-year-old kid to be excited about something, or anything, it’s fun to be a part of that. If we can get them smiling, laughing + enjoying the experience, that’s a lot of fun to witness. My favorite part of the program is engaging with the students and just seeing them laugh and have a good time with it.

[2] When we published a story about this program in STRUCTURE magazine, we started seeing people downloading the plans from all over the country as well as internationally. That was pretty exciting to see.

Tara Flaherty

I really love going in-person to the classrooms and getting to work with the students. It’s really exciting to watch them light up and be excited about engineering.

Trent Phillips

My favorite part of the program is definitely the philanthropic aspect. And, I’m a mentor at my core so I love teaching. When you get to go into a classroom and really see the students light up with excitement and see their engagement – it’s so rewarding.

Aaron Pajestka

My favorite part of the program is engaging with the students and seeing them collaborate in their groups.

The secret behind our homemade shake table

We built the table to be easily accessible, understandable + transparent. We wanted everybody to see the steampunk connections, the wires of the Raspberry Pi connected to the breadboard, connected to the motor. We made sure that the table was transparent so people could see how the gears turned through the table. We wanted structural engineers to be seen as not just as the people building the tower, but as leaders in the whole ecosystem.

All the parts needed to be inexpensive + accessible. We didn’t want anything to be intimidating so we made the wheels out of skateboard trucks that we got at Five Below. The whole kit can be purchased or built by anybody for less than $200.

Inspiring more than just the future structural engineers in the room

We hope students gain the ability to work with competing interests. We provide an open-ended question + problem. The classroom presentation asks them to build something that satisfies competing interests from architects, contractors and engineering needs. Balancing + prioritizing interests is applicable to everyone.

The teams must collaborate. While architects + engineers are constantly working with other groups of people, coming up with new ideas, and brainstorming, this program allows students to develop and grow in that sense. They can brainstorm ideas, build new + recalibrate based on the results, which is a really useful skill.

Why Schaefer’s resources are publicly-available

Schaefer wants to make this accessible to everyone because we believe that inspiring the next generation of engineers is important. We can only share Makers+Shakers in our local communities so the objective is to get others involved and build a community across the nation to make a bigger difference.