INTO THE MIX CLASS HIGHLIGHTS
Senior Capstone Project: She is the Music Database Engineering can be used as a mechanism for social change, especially when students have the opportunity to implement their own ideas through senior capstone projects. Together, Ashley Wicks ’20, Laurel Haeger ’20, and Zaila Foster ’20 built a database to connect women in the music industry. Ashley, Laurel, and Zaila all recognize that women have been and continue to be underrepresented in the music industry. Furthermore, they emphasize that women of color are especially marginalized in this industry. The three teammates conjectured, “If we offer an easier way for women to be discovered and connected to projects in the music industry, representation of women might increase.” To address this problem, their engineering goal was to build a product to support a pipeline for both current and future generations of women in music—a product that is easily accessible by both the general public and professionals. The three women built a VOCL (Voices of Change Leaders) database, which allows users to search, sort, and filter in order to locate various female artists. The foundation provided by Tufts Engineering allowed the three seniors to construct a project that addressed a pertinent real-world issue.
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EN-0001 Applications in Engineering: Engineering in Crises Interested in examining engineering ethics alongside engineering design processes? Engineering in Crises explores a different topic each term that it is offered. When Elana Chan ’21 took the course, it was “centered on case studies, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and [the] 2010 Haiti earthquake and cholera outbreak, which made lectures super engaging.” Elana says that the course included multiple, hands-on projects. Her favorite was building a small-scale levee to test in the structures lab. “I learned so much about context-specific engineering and the role of engineering in public health throughout the semester,” she reflects. “This course solidified my decision to pursue engineering!” René LaPointe Jameson ’22 thinks that Engineering in Crises is a great example of Tufts Engineering as a whole: “I really enjoyed how collaborative [this class] was… Tufts Engineering is challenging, but not competitive amongst students. We engage with one another to learn and consider new ideas. I like to think the only competition that goes on is with yourself in an attempt to grow and do better.”
