Arizona has a fast growing population. Such a fact make the "Valley of the Sun" prosporous. However, young population needs to be trained innovatively in engineering, so that information technology-based industry can be competitive to the other areas that has a better resources than what we have in Arizona. Therefore, Yang has been eagle in engaging high school students from different channels to encourage them for selecting engineering, power engineering, and artificial intelligence in power engineering. During these interactions, the motivation is the key for the high-school level. To motivate students for active thinking, Yang typically let the students to see a product and feel the needs before starting the vivid explaination on the slides. In slides, he keeps a straight forward logic on what the challenges are, what makes us ready today to solve the problem, and how to start from a toy example.
For one-to-one advising of k-12 students, the PI personally supervised two students, Dev Singhania and Travis Zhang, from Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona, and guided them on their project of cyber-security data in electric power system for their Honors Research class and science fair competition.
To let students obtain in-depth understanding, Yang further explain how each component, e.g., the wheels or the motor, works. Then, he encourage students to hold the electric vehicle robot and check the connectivity by themselves.
In addition to instructing the high school student on engineering the results, Yang also had break-sessions for student to come and chat with their career paths. For example, he will explain to the students on what is the work loads during the four years and when they can choose a major, e.g., power area. He will also explain on when the career fair will be held for internship and how to obtain necessary skills for getting the desired job. Finally, he will give some stories on how some students can join some professors' research team to enhance the resume, which may also leading to financial support for graduate level studies.
