AET Hosts 2018 TSA Regionals
On Friday, February 23, 2018 the Department of Applied Engineering & Technology (AE&T), within the College of Business & Technology (CB&T), hosted the annual Technology Student Association (TSA) Regional competitions for middle- and high-school students in the Central Kentucky region.
This year approximately 300 students from 10 counties participated in 30 technology-oriented competitive events. In addition to schools from Madison and Fayette counties, students from Wayne and McCreary counties in southern Kentucky; Carroll, Henry, and Pendleton counties in the north; Boyle, Nelson and Meade counties in the west were represented at the TSA event. The diagram below shows the distribution of students in at various TSA events.
TSA student competitions were judged by AE&T department faculty, staff, students, and volunteers. The most popular event was Technology Problem Solving, followed by Video Game Design and Dragster Design, followed by Tech Bowl, a Jeopardy-style event. Other popular events were Children’s Stories, Leadership Strategies, and Problem Solving. Several of the over 200 high school and 75 middle-schoolers enjoyed participating in multiple events spread out over the morning and afternoon.
While most of the events are held on site, some such as Dragsters, Music Production, On Demand Video, Digital Video Production, and Website Design require early online submissions and judging. In many cases winners of the EKU regional competitions go on to participate in the state TSA competition and even nationally.
On the day of the event, numerous undergraduate and grad students in the AE&T department volunteered their time for helping in the setup and judging of events, including the highly contested Dragster, Flight, and Tech Bowl events. Departmental staff members Linda Huff, Carol Moores, and Cathy Barnes provided invaluable help in making the event a success.
The TSA events are a critical part of the national Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Health (STEM-H) initiative in Kentucky and nationally. Mark Harrell, Engineering Consultant & Director of KYTSA in the Kentucky Department of Education led the event organization this year, involving new schools in the region to the competitions.
Next year the competition is scheduled to be hosted February, 22nd, the last Friday of February, in the Whalin Technology Complex. For more information regarding the 2018 TSA regional competitions please contact Mark Harrell (Mark.Harrell@education.ky.gov, 502-564-4286, ext. 4227) who is coordinating the EKU TSA event along with Michael Walach, Vigs Chandra, and the AE&T department chair Dr. Tim Ross. Additional details regarding the EKU regional TSA competitions is available at: http://www.eku-aet.org/tsa/.
Thanks to Diamond McMullen, Network Security Management (NSM) grad student for images of the and to Stephen Brewer, NSM grad student, for detailed analytics of the 2018 TSA Regional competitions.
Published on February 23, 2018