PEARL HARBOR NAVAL SHIPYARD & IMF, Hawaii - Our shipyard, in an effort to deepen our connections with the local community, has reached out to the University of Hawai’i and formed an educational partnership. This partnership has allowed selected students to come onto the shipyard within the Engineering and Planning Department (EPD) where they are gaining valuable experience in industry while also earning class credit towards their degrees. These students, working on actual unscripted engineering scenarios, have already experienced unexpected aspects of engineering and learned valuable concepts not typically taught within a classroom.
One example discussed between the students, EPD personnel, and the University of Hawai’i-Manoa’s Mechanical Engineering Department head was the concept of “engineering to fail” where a part is specifically designed to fail before another, more critical, component would. Another, even more valuable, understanding that the students have taken away from their experience here so far is that real-world scenarios are not usually clear-cut with a definitive answer at the end. Instead, they are learning to rely upon their understanding of engineering concepts from their classes, their own experiences to date, and the experiences of their co-workers/ supervisors in order to develop the “best” answer for the given situation.
Because of this partnership, our shipyard is enriched with fresh ideas from a new generation, the students are learning previously unknown practices from industry, and the university’s mechanical engineering department is developing new class ideas for future students.
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