K-12

Seismic Outreach is an annual student run program sponsored by the Society of Civil and Structural Engineers (SCSE), UC San Diego’s ASCE Student Chapter, that gives students from all majors the opportunity to reach out to local San Diego 4th through 6th grade classes. Volunteers teach younger students about earthquake science and engineering. The main objective is to introduce young students to the field of engineering while promoting growth in communication, teamwork, and creativity. The LHPOST6 supports UC San Diego volunteers to bring more than 1,000 local 4th-6th grade students to the UCSD campus annually as part of a K’NEX design competition.

The program works with the classroom teachers by introducing hands-on curriculum that the teachers implement in the classroom. The project culminates in a design competition and students visit on the UC San Diego campus where students test their K'Nex structures, present their design ideas, and take a campus tour to see our awesome laboratory facilities.

Interested in participating in Seismic Outreach either by having your class participate or serving as a volunteer?

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NHERI4Kids is an outreach event that brings students from school districts that have a high population of underrepresented minority and low income students to learn about earthquake engineering and our design challenge. Similar to the regular Seismic Outreach program, NHERI4Kids provides teachers with hands-on instructional scaffolding activities that they can use in the classroom between our first presentation and when they come to the LHPOST6. The students rotate through five different activities: 1) Watching videos of past tests on the shake table, 2) Tour of the facility above ground, 3) Tour of the facility below ground, 4) Make Your Own Earthquake activity, and 5) Placement of their structures on the shake table for the KNex competition testing. 

This is a summer research program at UC San Diego to encourage participation of high school students, university students, and researchers/teachers in research in the sciences and engineering and promote cross-border collaboration between Latin America and the US. We engage with ENLACE to encourage students from minority serving institutions to enter in STEM fields. We host ENLACE high school and college students each summer to engage in the LHPOST6 research and provide an annual tour of the LHPOST6 facilities for the entire ENLACE cohort with hands-on engineering activities.

The California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) is a four-week residential summer program open to entering ninth through exiting twelfth-grade high school students with demonstrated interest and achievement in math and science. COSMOS students participating in cluster 4 (Earthquakes in Action) learn about the basics of plate tectonics and are introduced to the basic physics and mathematics that explain how buildings and bridges react to earthquakes, including how we can protect these structures using modern technologies like dampers and base-isolation devices. Each year, Cluster 4 students visit the LHPOST6 to tour and participate in ongoing research at our facility.

The LHPOST6 works with the diverse engineering student organizations (NSBE, SHPE, SWE, etc.) and the various outreach events they host throughout the year by providing tours, hands-on activities, and serving on panels.  

The CREATE STEM Success Initiative (CSSI) is a visionary collective effort linking UC San Diego faculty, staff and students and the San Diego education community in a shared effort to support K-20 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in the region. The LHPOST6 leverages CSSI activities to promote earthquake engineering education across the broader STEM community, conducts tours of our world-class facility, and hosts hands-on outreach events in the community.