High School Students Check Out AME's Wind Tunnels

As part of the Summer Engineering Academy summer program, local high school students gained an early perspective on what it’s really like to study at the College of Engineering. SEA is a camp for rising high school sophomores through new graduates.

Pre-COVID, SEA was offered solely as a residential program. The camp was canceled in 2020 and returned in 2021 as a virtual program. This summer, it was offered as a hybrid program with virtual bundles and single-day in-person options. Around 150 students participated, with many signing up for multiple modules. Over 230 enrollments were recorded this year, the highest number in the program’s history of more than 30 years. College leaders hope to offer a variety of options again in 2023.

Twin sisters Audrey and Sydney Aune, juniors at BASIS Tucson North High School, attended two in-person SEA days. Both are considering careers in engineering and wanted to learn more about specialties and which preparatory classes to take.

For Sydney, who leans toward aerospace engineering, the best and most surprising part of SEA was seeing and working with the college’s equipment. This includes AME's wind tunnels that are used for testing hypersonic vehicles at speeds of Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound – or faster.

“It was informative and really cool,” she said.