On Tuesday, May 23rd, HANC High School engineering students attended the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE) Innovation Day where students from across the country exhibit their capstone projects in a CIJE-organized competition at the American Dream Mall.  

For capstone projects, students are challenged with making their own inventions that help solve a specific problem. The students are tasked with making an invention, from dream or concept to different iterations of their designs to engineering and building the final product. 

When the HANC students arrived and settled down, they were given time to explore the mall’s attractions and its vast number of stores. As the competition began, the student teams were separated into different rooms to pitch their projects to judges and to their peers, which would be scored by both in order to determine what, if any, awards they would win. Within each room, teams could be awarded Best Pitch based on the feedback of other students or could win category awards determined by the many judges. The various categories included Engineering for School, Engineering for Workplace, and Assistive Technology. 

The day was a fruitful one for our entries. Among the HANC teams, Avi Baruch and Shmuel Woznica won Best Pitch, and Noam Traeger, Menachem Adler, Zahava Speiser, and Elana Max were placed second in the Engineering for School category. It was a special day for them as well as for the school as a whole!

Following awards, the HANC students were given another opportunity to enjoy all of the fun and diverse opportunities in the mall before finally departing back to school. 

Thank you to CIJE for giving us this amazing, fun, and challenging opportunity. Thank you to Professor Singh, HANC’s engineering teacher, in particular for all of your invaluable advice throughout the year.