Volume 24, Number 9 ● August 2, 2016
Aspiring Scientists and Engineers Visit WSSI
WSSI hosted high schoolers participating in the Washington Youth Summit on the Environment; Triad Engineering demonstrated use of a geo probe on site.
Throughout the year, WSSI opens its doors to the public to give an up close and personal look at our sustainably built facility and to show what goes on behind our walls on a day to day basis. Just recently, two different youth organizations toured our office for a day of education. On June 28th WSSI hosted a field visit for over 40 students participating in The Washington Youth Summit on the Environment (WYSE). The WYSE is a program set up for high achieving rising juniors and seniors in high schools across the country with interest in the environment, conservation, and sustainability that want to explore careers in environmental science, conservation, policy, law, and engineering, and is a collaboration between George Mason University, National Geographic, and the National Zoo. The students spent the day touring our facility to learn about Low Impact Development (LID) at WSSI’s LEED Gold headquarters. The LID features at our office allowed the students to view first hand those currently being used in our industry today. Triad Engineering teamed on the field day with WSSI and performed demonstrations using a geo probe to educate the students on soil and soil testing.
Young Scholars on WSSI's green roof, learning about low impact development (LID) by example
On July 20th WSSI hosted over 30 middle school students participating in Fairfax County Public Schools’ Young Scholars program. The Young Scholars program aims to nurture the potential of students who may not have the opportunity to pursue advanced levels of learning on their own and prepares them for challenging coursework in elementary, middle, high school and beyond. They met with WSSI’s engineering staff, who guided them on a tour of the facilities and demonstrated to them WSSI’s wetland and stream restoration efforts along with LID design and implementation, while connecting our work to the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields of study.