Shipbuilding Career Day at Old Dominion
The Shipbuilding Repair and Maritime Career Day Event 2010 was held in the Ted Constant Convocation Center on March 30 in Norfolk, Virginia. About 700 students and 70 teachers from different schools in Hampton Roads area participated in this daylong event. This year the scope of this event was extended to include maritime industry. The event offered an educational and fun-filled environment for middle and high school students to learn about various career options in shipbuilding, repair and maritime industries. The event was held from 8.00am till 3.00pm.
This Career Day Event was based on the success of last 2 year’s events that was originally a part of a project funded by National Shipbuilding Research Program (NSRP). Lean Institute at Old Dominion University and local shipbuilding and repair industry organized this event to address demand from school teachers and counselors for an event like SBRCD 2008-09. Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding Apprentice School, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, BAE Systems, Military Sealift Command and Virginia Port Authority were the major sponsor for SBRCD 2010.
The career day event was divided into three major activities: 1) Industry Expo 2) Hands on Activity and 3) Shipyard Tours.
Key note Speaker Mr. Don Blount from Donald L Blount and Associates (DLBA) provided information on various career opportunities in the marine world to middle school and high school students in his informative lectures on “The Marine Industry – A WORLD of opportunities”.
Another first for this year’s event was the presentation of project work by the undergraduate and graduate students from ODU’s Marine Engineering programs. Graduate students presented their findings and undergraduate students presented their projects through a poster session.
SBRCD 2010 is part of the Marine Career Tech project funded by the National Science Foundation to improve the future workforce in shipbuilding and maritime industry. Similar events will be held in West Virginia and Louisiana during 2011 and 2012. In addition, Lean Institute is working on MarineTech project whose goal is to improve education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math using project based learning kits related to Marine and Maritime industry.
www.sbrcd.org
