With COVID-19 protocols, Engineering Week 2021 looks different from prior years but retains its signature combination of events for fun, enlightenment and career planning.
The lineup features trivia contests, gear giveaways, public school outreach, game nights and more. Undergraduate engineering students started the week Monday by getting new professional photos taken and getting career-building ideas from a panel of Vanderbilt alumni. 
Tamara Baynham, BE’93, Robert Amponsah, BE’06, and Jessica Haley, PhD’15 and BE’10, shared insights and approaches to building professional networks and navigating the search for jobs and internships.
Tuesday and Wednesday, from noon until 2 p.m., E-Week organizers will give away stickers and masks at the Alumni Lawn tent. Tuesday evening, student teams of up to four will face off against engineering professors in an online trivia challenge with prizes that include Snuggies, Tile Bluetooth Trackers and jigsaw puzzles.
A second game night is an engineering-themed contest of skribbl.io Thursday, again with prizes. Wednesday and Thursday, seven groups of two to four engineering undergraduates will visit Nashville Metro Public School classrooms and talk to students about engineering.
Eligible students will take the ethics oath and be inducted into the Order of the Engineer at 4 p.m. Thursday, during an event on Zoom.
“Due to the circumstances, we decreased the number of events, though we did fit in two game nights ,” said Shubham Gulati, president of the VUSE Engineering Council. “Both are being run in partnership with other engineering organizations to ensure that we are still able to make this a week where multiple organizations from within the school can work together and have fun.”
Event sponsors, in addition to the E-Council, include Vanderbilt ASCE, Theta Tau and Emerge, all engineering student groups.
“I am really excited that we have been able to plan all these events during these uncertain times,” said Gulati, a biomedical engineering junior.
E-Week is an annual event across the U.S. that spotlights engineers’ contributions to improved quality of life and motivates young learners to pursue careers in engineering and technology. It was started in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers.