The Lenoir City High School student filled out the anonymous survey after hearing Hector Pulgar share his personal story about pursuing a career in engineering.
Pulgar, an associate professor in the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was visiting the Tennessee high school to launch his Career Advancement, Mentorship, Inspiration, and Opportunities (CAMINO) program.
The idea for CAMINO stemmed from Pulgar receiving the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2021. As part of the honor, Pulgar wanted to make an impact in the Hispanic community by creating a mentoring program to introduce Hispanic students to engineering. Camino means “path” in Spanish.
Pulgar wanted young Hispanic students to see other Hispanics in engineering roles and bond through their shared cultural backgrounds. He was initially nervous about how the Lenoir City High students would respond to the idea until reading the response from the student in the survey.
“The student wrote, ‘You came here to tell us all about how you made your career and how difficult it was. But because you made it through, I think that I can make it through as well,” Pulgar said. “That almost brought tears to my face. That’s exactly what we were trying to achieve.”
Pulgar selected Lenoir City High as CAMINO’s first mentoring opportunity because of the school’s large Hispanic population. Mark Weeks, the career and technical education director at Lenoir City High School, thought having Pulgar and CAMINO visit campus would be a big benefit to the students.
“When he came down and met with the kids the first time, he basically taught a physical science class to them all in Spanish,” Weeks said. “It was like the skies opened. The kids were amazed and completely hooked in.”
Providing Mentors
Pulgar has recruited fellow Hispanic UT faculty members and students to help him with CAMINO. They visit Lenoir City during an advisory period to share their stories, work on projects, and answer questions.
“When we started working on this, we started seeing the reality of what these children experience. Most of them do not have an academic role model in their families,” Pulgar said. “We recently got a survey from them and some students have parents with just an elementary school education or might have one parent that went to college.”
Francisco Zelaya, one of Pulgar’s PhD students, has been serving as a mentor in CAMINO. Zelaya is from El Salvador and studied in Mexico before arriving at UT for his graduate work.
“That’s why I wanted to contribute to this program, because most of these kids have similar backgrounds to the one that I have,” Zelaya said. “Maybe their background is harder than mine, so I want to inspire them and make them feel that they can do a lot of stuff that people have made them believe that they cannot do.”
Madeline Garren asked Pulgar if she could volunteer to be a mentor despite not being Hispanic. Garren, 26, worked full time after graduating from high school before returning to college at UT as an undergraduate to study engineering.
“I wish I had been introduced to engineering earlier through something like this program,” Garren said. “There wasn’t really a lot of talk about what engineering was like or encouraged at my high school. I just think about how different my life would be if I had known about engineering back then. I want these students to have that.”
Hands-On Experiences
The CAMINO students at Lenoir City High have been working on a project for the last year that Pulgar has detailed on his YouTube channel. The group first made an electrical generator with a wood rod, bearings, magnets, and wire.
“They were so impressed how we were able to turn a light bulb on out of nothing,” Pulgar said. “It was not connected to the outlet. We did it just by applying physics.”
The next phase of the project involved 3D printing and how to design a generator on a computer that was more sophisticated. The final phase was creating a hydroelectric turbine. The group is currently working to add a control system to keep the speed of the generator constant.
“There are a lot of kids that were very shy at the beginning. They didn’t know anything about STEM or engineering,” Zelaya said. “Now, they are very, very familiar with this term. They want to be engineers and work on things. They want to study in the university. This is very promising, and it showed that the kids are very encouraged by this program.”
Last summer, Pulgar invited a group of 10 Lenoir City High students interested in studying engineering to UT to attend a symposium. Weeks accompanied the students, some of whom were visiting a college campus for the first time.
“We thought it was going to be us and a bunch of people in an auditorium or something. But Dr. Pulgar had pulled together some other UT professors and a couple of people from off site to be connected to our kids,” Weeks said. “He showed us around some of the labs and they attended a real class. I was blown away that they invested that much in us, because that took a lot for them to pull that together.”
Reaching More Students
Pulgar wants to get more Hispanic students on UT campus and involved in programs like HITES12 and eVOL10. Three Lenoir City High students have already expressed interest.
“That’s going to be the first fruit of the work that I have been doing for three years—to finally support a student, to come to the university and get enrolled in the HITES12,” Pulgar said. “They’re very passionate. They’re very interested in engineering.”
Pulgar has visions of expanding CAMINO to other schools or having a centralized location where students of all ages can come to take part in the program.
“I want to make an impact in my life, in my career. I had a lot of people that supported me along the way, and without those people, I would have not been in this position at the university doing something that I love,” Pulgar said. “In a way, this is my reciprocation. If they did that for me, I can do that for others.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)