Projet P[|#19#|]égase: Increasing Interest in STEM Through Design and Flight of a Human Powered Aircraft

The last decade has seen a significant increase in efforts to promote STEM education fields. The engineering community has been particularly active in developing new programs and elaborating initiatives to increase interest in the profession and to recruit new students. Meanwhile, a lot remains to be done in order to generate the required workforce of the next decade. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how senior design projects in engineering schools can contribute to the promotion of STEM education and more specifically, of aerospace careers. The design, fabrication and testing of a full-scale Human Powered Aircraft developed at the Universite de Sherbrooke is introduced to demonstrate how it allowed a group of 12 engineering students to interact with their community and transmit their passions to students. The outline of the mechanical engineering program at the Universite de Sherbrooke and specifications about the prototype are presented along with a description of the initiatives led by the students to promote STEM careers. Finally, the benefits of this initiative for both the engineering community and the students are discussed.