Summer Engineering Experiences for High Schoolers

Learn new skills, lead hands-on experiments, and discover your engineering passion in Summer Engineering Experiences with the Opus College of Engineering at Marquette University. Each Summer Engineering Experience is designed to ignite curiosity and critical thinking in participating high school students. These sessions also allow high school students to explore Marquette’s engineering spaces alongside current faculty, staff and students!

• Summer Engineering Experiences at Marquette are non-residential, half-day programs hosted on Marquette's campus.
• Families are responsible for their own transportation to and from campus each day.
• For our 2025 programs, we are only accepting rising 10^th graders and above.
• Please note required math experience for select programs. Please contact engineering@marquette.edu with any questions.
• The Opus College of Engineering has scholarship funds available to support students who are unable to attend a Summer Engineering Experience due to financial concerns. Students and families interested in receiving scholarship support are encouraged to use the standard registration process and then complete the scholarship steps that will be shared via email.

Register

Summer 2025 programs:

Structures in Motion: designing resilient infrastructure for earthquakes and more

July 21 - 24 | 9:00am – 12:30pm | $225 registration fee | Registration

Explore the engineering and science behind how buildings and bridges are designed to remain safe when subjected to earthquakes, wind, and other dynamic loads. From basic physics to high-tech devices and software, engineers use a wide range of design and retrofit strategies to ensure new and existing structures are ready to withstand these variable and sometimes unpredictable loads.

Students will participate in hands-on demonstrations and coding modules to understand and visualize how civil engineers design, maintain, and monitor the infrastructure around us. Participants will also discuss structural design strategies at the cutting edge of the field.

This program is a good fit for any high schooler interested in engineering and has the closest connections to civil engineering, construction engineering and environmental engineering.

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Biomedical Engineering Bootcamp: biology, medicine and technology

July 28 - 30 | 9:00am – 12:30pm | $200 registration fee | Registration full - join waitlist

Participate in hands-on experiments in biomechanics, bioelectronics and biocomputing to discover the multiple avenues of biomedical engineering. This Experience will showcase the many ways a biomedical engineer uses technology to deliver life-changing solutions to real patients. Participants will gain experience with coding, electronics and mechanical devices that all interact to serve patients.

This program is a good fit for any high schooler interested in engineering, and has the closest connections to biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering and electrical engineering. Students with a special interest in biology and healthcare are encouraged to enroll.

Registration for this program has reached capacity. Interested families are encouraged to register for the program's waitlist to be informed about possible openings. In the event of a cancellation, families will be contacted in the order of waitlist registration.

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Code for Climate

July 28 - August 1| 9:00am – 12:30pm | $250 registration fee | Registration

Are you interested in learning to code? Curious about the air quality and air pollution in your community? Wondering how forecasters predict weather? Or want to learn how to interpret and explain climate change data? In this program, participants will learn coding while investigating real-world climate and air pollution data.

This program offers hands-on experience with programming fundamentals, and participants will write their own code to analyze data using Python. They will also learn how to monitor air quality and explore how air quality affects communities.

By the end of the experience, students will have written a program to explore, analyze and visualize Milwaukee air quality data.

No prior coding experience is necessary. This program is a good fit for any high schooler interested in engineering, especially those interested in learning to code. Coding is a skill that is useful in almost every discipline of science and engineering. 

Note: experience in algebra is required.

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Fail, Learn and Repeat: Exploration of Automation

August 4 - 5| 9:00am – 12:30pm | $150 registration fee | Registration

Explore and discover how engineers use the engineering method with automation to solve real-world problems! Students will use the engineering method to get to know our cobots (collaborative robots), and program and experiment with them to learn the principles of automation.

Emphasis will be placed on how to break down large problems into manageable pieces that can be tested quickly to learn the fundamental theories governing a multidisciplinary system. This experience is hosted in our Omron Advanced Automation Lab, a state-of-the-art learning laboratory co-created with industry to develop the next generation of industrial automation, manufacturing and supply chain leaders.

This program is a good fit for any high schooler interested in engineering, and has the closest connections to mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer engineering.

Note: experience in algebra is required.

Adaptive Car Build Week with Go Baby Go! Milwaukee

August 4 - 8| 9:00am – 12:30pm | $250 registration fee | Registration full - join waitlist

Ready to use your skills to Be The Difference for children in our community? Join the engineers behind Go Baby Go! Milwaukee to help modify ride-on cars for children who experience limited mobility. Students will learn about electrical circuits so they can design a real Go Baby Go! car circuit.

Participants will learn the principles, tools and skills behind electrical modifications, then put them into practice on real Go Baby Go! cars that will be given to local families. In addition to working alongside Marquette engineers, participants will hear from Physical and Occupational Therapists from Children's Wisconsin.

This program is a good fit for any high schooler interested in engineering, and has the closest connections to biomedical engineering, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.

Registration for this program has reached capacity. Interested families are encouraged to register for the program's waitlist to be informed about possible openings. In the event of a cancellation, families will be contacted in the order of waitlist registration.

Smarter Machines: exploring microcontrollers and artificial intelligence

August 6 - 8| 9:00am – 12:30pm | $200 registration fee | Registration

Use the powers of electrical and computer engineering to take simple machines to the next level of intelligence. In this program, participants will explore the interplay of microcontrollers, embedded systems and artificial intelligence to make products and solutions for everyday use.

Participants will create small machines that flash LEDs, sing jingles, connect to Bluetooth to create chat applications, and even use machine learning concepts to recognize words and images.

This program is a good fit for any high schooler interested in engineering and has the closest connections to computer engineering and electrical engineering.

Register:

Please contact engineering@marquette.edu with any questions.