February 17, 2025
Have you ever navigated a roundabout using office chairs? A few of our team members gained some unique skills supporting the Central Florida Construction Career Day last month!
Since 1999, Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)’s Construction Career Days program has given students hands-on opportunities to learn about potential career paths in transportation, engineering, and construction. This year, more than 1,700 high school students from 48 schools took part, and Kittelson’s Shriya Dhir, Jasmine Blais, Yujie Li, Seanna Ryan, Rajvi Shah, Alex Morgan, Marcus Jackson, and Andy Sevilla got to engage with many of them while supporting the FDOT District 5 Passenger Operations Group in facilitating a fun and creative exercise that gave new meaning to the phrase “walk, ride, and roll.”
By outlining a roundabout with tape, we gave students a hands-on way to learn and experience different road user scenarios through play. We designed a (miniaturized) geometrically accurate roundabout that allowed for our design vehicle (the office chair) and our design user (the teenage new driver) to test their skills at navigating it.
The group of participants was divided into drivers, pedestrians, and law enforcement officials, and each person was given a task that directed where they needed to go using the intersection (for example, a school bus driver dropping off kids at their homes). The students enjoyed navigating a variety of “conflicts” amongst users that generated laughs and learning. Road users navigated the intersection by yielding to the pedestrian distracted on their phone, or the driver already in the roundabout trying to get to the grocery store. At the end, we quizzed their knowledge on roundabouts with a series of trivia questions.
Road users navigated the intersection by yielding to the pedestrian distracted on their phone, or the driver already in the roundabout trying to get to the grocery store. Drone images taken by Bernie Hofmeister from TranSystems.
Entertaining as it was, the simulation gave us an opportunity to chat with students about the layers of thinking that go into a project like a roundabout design. Participants asked us questions about transportation and engineering careers, and we also got to share about the safety benefits of roundabouts (one of our favorite topics!). As a side benefit, many of these students are new drivers, and this exercise reinforced to them the importance of paying attention, following traffic rules, and being cognizant of all road users.
“The simulation was a hit with the students. They actively engaged in the experience and quickly grasped the importance of yielding to pedestrians and circulating traffic,” said Transportation Analyst Shriya Dhir. “It gave them a firsthand look at the challenges transportation engineers and planners consider when designing intersections.”
“It gave them a firsthand look at the challenges transportation engineers and planners consider when designing intersections.”
- Shriya Dhir, Transportation Analyst
Engineers Week 2025
There are many opportunities to engage students in the types of questions we encounter in our industry (and sometimes, theirs is the perspective we need as we strive to think about challenges from all angles!). February 16-22, 2025 is Engineers Week, a time to think about how we can inspire future engineers and planners—FDOT’s event being an excellent example!
The theme of the 2025 Engineers Week is “Design Your Future”: a celebration of how engineers shape advancements in our communities, and a call to encourage the next generation of students, particularly those who might not otherwise picture themselves in engineering roles, to consider if engineering could be a meaningful career for them.
If you have a student outreach success story to share, whether inside or outside E-Week, we’d love to hear about it!