IN THE NEWS

Professor Shows Kids Fun Of Engineering
By DONNA KOEHN dkoehn@tampatrib.com 
Published: Apr 5, 2004

CLEARWATER - You could say it all began 22 years ago, when German-born engineer Rudy Henning, 80, of Belleair introduced a diverse group of middle- and high school students to the art of building bridges, exploring robotics and building a better mousetrap car. 
That would be true. 

But in a sense, the seeds of ``YES - We Care'' were planted long ago, in 19th century Berlin by a physician, scientist and statesman who handed down a family legacy of working for the common good. He was Rudolf Virchow, Henning's great-grandfather, revered as the father of cellular pathology and as a crusader for improving social conditions. 

``My parents were very proud of him, and he was always held up as an example of an important person,'' Henning says. 

Henning, who left Germany with his family in 1938 at age 15, decided against going into medicine as his parents had hoped. 

Instead, the logic and intellectual stimulation of engineering called him, first to a distinguished career in the private sector, then in mid-career, back to the academic environment. He has been a professor at the University of South Florida for more than 30 years. 

In 1982, at an age when many would have been making plans for retirement, Henning looked at his field of study and worried, seeing too few minority and female students entering the profession he loved. Additionally, other countries were making major strides in training young engineers, and he fretted about the competition for his beloved second home. 

``I thought to myself, `If we don't do something about this, we're going to be in trouble,' '' he says with a chuckle. ``But I found young students and their parents didn't know anything about engineering.'' 

He came up with the idea of a Saturday morning engineering class for those in sixth through 12th grades. He dubbed the program ``We Care'' to make it catchy and appealing for the corporate sponsors he knew he needed to attract - and who he actively works to recruit to this day. 

But pretty quickly, he realized the bright teens had their own opinions. 

``They wanted it to be called `Youth Engineering Society,' '' he says. ``So we added the initials Y.E.S.'' 

More than 2,000 students have participated in the program, which meets at St. Petersburg College in Clearwater and at other locations in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. 

Saturday, the teens buzzed about, creating cars out of mousetraps for an annual competition to be held this weekend. A trip to the Kennedy Space Center is on tap the following week. 

Kevin LaLuzerne, 14, who was on a team of three taking first place in the national competition last year, enjoys sharing his passion for engineering with others who understand. 

``It really introduces you to this type of technology,'' he says. ``You can have fun creating things, like bridges that hold a certain amount of grams. Plus, you make new friends who help each other.'' 

Rose Mack, a teacher in the center for advanced technologies at Lakewood High School, has been the program's county coordinator since it began. 

``Dr. Henning had an absolutely fantastic idea that has really helped many students meet others who are like- minded and who have gone on to college,'' she says. ``He saw a need and personally sought to do something for our country.'' 

Louis Martin-Vega, dean of the College of Engineering at USF, was eager to meet Henning and the rest of the faculty when he joined the university three years ago. 

``Rudy is one of our distinguished professors, and I started with them,'' he says. ``He came in and sat down. Now, Rudy is a senior individual, so I was curious to see what we were going to talk about. He said, `I'm delighted to meet you, and I'd like to discuss my 10-year plan.' I just sat back and thought, `I want to get to know this man.' 

``He is a remarkable person. And he's got the gleam in his eye of a 20-year-old.'' 

Saturday morning, Henning helped Aakash Patel, 12, fine- tune the mechanism of his mousetrap car. Patel shared his enthusiasm with the older man. 

``Barely anybody I go to school with knows about these kinds of things,'' he says. ``It's actually fun, it's not even that I look at it like, `Oh, no, I have to give up my Saturday mornings.' It's like, `Hey, I get to go!' '' 

Henning knows it's unlikely he'll see his name and photograph in the Encyclopaedia Britannica alongside his esteemed great-grandfather. That's all right with him. 

His legacy is forged whenever he hears from a professional engineer - and he often does - who credits ``YES - We Care'' for starting him or her on the way. 

And as he studies the young faces on Saturday mornings, he knows there's likely one or two with that certain gleam in his eye and a dream of building bridges. 


Reporter Donna Koehn can be reached at (813) 259-8264.



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