Seventh grade students, Tegan Specht and Mckayla Boyd, from McMath Middle school in Denton, Texas participate in a design challenge problem inside the Huitt-Zollars pavilion Saturday afternoon. The SMU Lyle School of Engineering brought in 850 North Texas middle school students Saturday for the 11th annual Visioneering program. (REBECCA HANNA/The Daily Campus)

Eight hundred and fifty middle school students were in SMU classrooms last Saturday, designing the perfect living room for the year 2030.

The competition was the main aspect of Visioneering, a recruiting event hosted by the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

The 11th annual event had sixth through eighth-graders in Moody Coliseum by 8:30 a.m. for a rock-concert setting where they were introduced to the campus with examples of how engineering is changing the way of life through ways such as digital technology.

The students were split into small groups, which went to various classrooms throughout campus buildings to compete in designing the perfect living room with all of the ideal technological advances that they believe should be around when they are 30.

Each group was led by a teacher from their schools and a mentor, a “seasoned engineer” from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The goal was to have students “engineer the living room of tomorrow and create a safer, healthier life.”

One group of seventh graders sat around two tables in a classroom in the J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building, drawing out their ideal den. These eight students started out with plans to control all of the devices from one controller.

Another group had plans for a machine to clip the toenails of one who is sleeping on the couch. One group had walls that were taken over by a TV of some kind (similar to Fahrenheit 451).

Among the middle schoolers were 85 teachers, 75 SMU engineering and 85 corporate mentors. Tammi Richards, associate dean for the engineering school, has managed this even for the past six years.

“We plant seeds at an early age,” she said. “If you don’t keep the math and science going, they opt out of it.”

Students are also exposed to engineering professionals as their mentors and as presenters at the technology expo following the design contest.

“Most of them, they’ve never met an engineer until this age,” she said. “They know about doctors, they know about teachers—they often don’t know about this profession.”

Each team was graded on six different criteria: Teamwork, creativity, visionary, adaptability, engineering excellence and simplicity. Six awards were given in these areas, each receiving various prizes.

Jackson Middle School of the Jackson Technology Center in Garland took the “Elegant Simplicity in Engineering Award.” Each of these winners received a medal that would be a chance for a $5,000 scholarship from the Pettinger Foundation, if he or she decides to pursue engineering in college.