The southern section of the Society of Automobile Engineers (SAEIndia), conducted its twelfth AWIM National Olympics at Vel Tech Rangarajan. Dr Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology in Chennai, recently. This year’s theme for the two-day national event was ‘Shaping Future Mobility’.
During the competition, the students were provided with kits containing raw materials to build toys like Skimmer, Jet Toy, Straw Rocket and the like. SAEInternational provides the curriculum, while SAEIndia has been implementing this programme in schools across the country. The main objective of the event is encouraging young minds in engineering by creating and designing model vehicles.
This year, the event had a total of 84 teams with 332 students, 178 volunteers, and teachers from 40 different regions. More than 15 categories of awards were presented to Jet toy and Skimmer teams, at the event. Vana Vani Matriculation Higher Secondary School, IIT Chennai won the overall winners of National Olympics 2019 in Skimmer, while Saraswati Gulabrao Patil Prathamik Vidyalaya, Nashik won for Jet Toy. In addition to this, Vel Tech gave away five special prizes for National Best Presentation on the theme, ‘Shaping Future Mobility’. The event also introduced a new competition this year, Glider Challenge for seventh standard students.
The valedictory function was attended by Prof Dr Sudha Seshayyan, Vice-Chancellor, Dr MGR Medical University and Dr Bala K Bharadvaj, President SAEIndia and Managing Director, Boeing Engineering and Technology Center India. Pointing out the advantages of STEM-based learning, Dr Sudha said, “STEM-based learning for young children will shape the future of mobility. The teachers should provide opportunities and channelize the young minds for a better world.”
AWIM (A World In Motion), is a teacher-administered, industry volunteer-assisted program designed mainly to bring science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education to students between 9 and 15 years. Started in the year 2007, AWIM is now covering over 100 Indian districts, with 2000 schools and touching life of about 3,00,000 students, annually.