By Charles Small, CUSP
November 6, 2006

Helping five-hundred 4th grade students simultaneously begin to create, cut and then race hand-made “puff mobiles” with the exuberance of a sports team having just won a world championship might not sound like a walk in the park. But in close collaboration with Dubuque (IA) Mayor Roy Boul and Superintendent John Burgart, Cities United for Science Progress (CUSP), lived up to the challenge and succeeded in creating 1,000 more “Engineers for a Day” through the Science in the School Day program.

DuPont engineer Shayne Campbell and Mayor Boul led two sessions September 19 of roughly five-hundred 4th graders each to promote fun in math and science education at the city’s Grand River Center on the same stage that hosted stand-up comedian Jay Leno a few days before.

The puff mobile experiment was the single largest event in one location in the five-year, 70-plus city history of Science in the School Day. Though in February, the program reached 7,000 children city-wide in Chicago, no one single location had as many children present as Dubuque did at one time.

“We are indeed honored that the U.S. Conference of Mayors and DuPont selected Dubuque for this important Science in the School Day program,” said Buol. “Our Dubuque schools value science and math education, and today we helped to plant the seeds of inquiry and discovery with almost 1,000 of our elementary students from across the entire city. We anticipate that this experience has encouraged our students to consider a career in math or science, and perhaps one day aspire to become engineers,” he concluded.

With all of the 4th graders in the Dubuque Community School District, along with students from Holy Family Schools, teachers and community leaders participating, Buol and Graham determined which “puff mobile” was the fastest in the city. The puff mobile is essentially a go-kart made of paper, straws, paper clips, tape and life'savers powered by big breaths of air by the makers.

This experiment creates a signature experience in a student’s academic career by requiring hands-on creative design, failure, remodeling and then ultimately success. In fact, several hundred of the students raised their hands when Graham asked if they were more interested in becoming engineers.

With this new CUSP record'setting event, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and DuPont have once again showed their commitment to furthering the cause of math and science.