pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

On Tuesday June 13th, 2017, a group of around 45 students and staff from Colorado’s Educational Talent Search Program came to visit the Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) at the University of Washington (UW). The group of outstanding students was taking part on a multi-day college tour to show them about opportunities they may not have been able to afford or experience otherwise and get them interested in college. PacTrans and STAR Lab director, Dr. Wang, and three of his students (John Ash, Zhiyong Cui, and Ruimin Ke) gave the group a brief presentation about exciting opportunities in civil and transportation engineering. The STAR Lab team talked about their work on mobile sensing, traffic monitoring with drones, and big data analytics in transportation. It was a great pleasure to have these wonderful students visit and we hope they find success with their educational pursuits, be they civil engineering related or not.

The Colorado’s Educational Talent Search Program works with middle, and high school students to help them attend college after graduation. Talent Search assists 6th-12th grade students by providing academic, career, college, and financial aid counseling. Among the many programs offered to Talent Search students are the summer college tours, which take 9th-11th graders to major universities all over the country. Talent Search is primarily geared toward students who: come from a family in which neither parent has completed a four-year college degree, come from a family whose income is limited, are a student who is a US citizen or permanent resident of the US, and are a student who has demonstrated a need for program services in order to pursue the dream of a college education.