‘Wonder in their eyes’: Brown’s Pre-College Programs introduce teens to a collegiate experience

"Having a mix of local and international students is really meaningful for everybody on campus," Marcus said. "It means that the diversity of experiences and the diversity of perspectives is that much broader, and that feeds everybody and helps everybody learn more about themselves, about the world and about each other."

Learning through experiments, leading through experience

On a warm July day, students in "Product Design for a Healthier Planet: Intro to Circular Economy Thinking " - a course offered in Pre-College's STEM for Rising Ninth and 10th Graders program - gathered inside the Brown Design Workshop.

Surrounded by piles of disassembled headphones, keyboards and other consumer goods, working amid the din of power saws and laser cutters, the students brainstormed how to improve the products' design, guided by the workshop's director, Associate Professor of the Practice of Engineering Louise Manfredi.

Over two weeks, students in Manfredi's course are working in pairs to dismantle popular products, examine their manufacturing processes and redesign them, all part of a dynamic introduction to fundamental engineering and circular economic design principles.

"I think it's really important to show that there are many different flavors of engineering," Manfredi said. "Engineering isn't just for a few people - really, it's for everybody."

For Vancouver, Canada, native Serina Fan, who will enter high school in the fall, the course has bolstered her interest in product design while introducing her to new tools, like 3D printing.

"We are really learning through experimentation," Fan said as she sat among a pile of speaker components. "We really want to find out how we can make better products."

Experiential learning is a crucial aspect of the course. When students encounter a hiccup and work through it, it's emblematic of the determination and creativity that successful engineering requires, according to Manfredi.

"Often, students become their own biggest teachers," Manfredi said.

But that sense of discovery and development isn't reserved just for Pre-College participants.

In addition to Brown faculty, over 270 instructional staff are graduate students, and over 60 undergraduate students from Brown serve as teaching assistants. Marcus said that shifting to teaching - rather than studying - during the summer can be illuminating.

"Teaching provides you the opportunity to understand your own subject matter in a precise and simple way, because you have to explain it to people who don't share your expertise," Marcus said. "It's a very different way of approaching scholarship."

That's certainly the case for Jai Chavis, a fourth-year medical student at the Warren Alpert Medical School, who co-instructs "Hands-On Medicine: A Week in the Life of a Medical Student."

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