A new club revolving around STEM education is coming to Allen High School. Engineering For All is a club created by three students who share one common interest.
“This club will be a student interest club where there’ll be four fields [of engineering],” junior Founder Maheen Zaman said. “Specifically environmental, electrical, software and civil. I saw these four fields as really reliable and that could help out various communities.”
Bonnie Marlow is the sponsor of this club. She is also a STEAM Environmental science teacher.
“This club is all about getting information out,” Marlow said. “My goal as the sponsor of this is to make sure kids have a safe place to come meet and talk about topics in a civil discussion. To open up ideas or topics that may be uncomfortable in other areas, but we can talk about them because there’s a lot of stuff happening in the world. So I want to make sure they have a space to talk about this.”
EFA got its name from the fact that the club is an all-in company. It is open to everyone, even students who may have never come across engineering.
“We chose that name because everyone in this club are people who like STEM-oriented classes or just engineering in general,” junior Lead Secretary Ishaan Chopra said. “We chose this name because we want to introduce STEM and engineering to an abundance of people, from children to people our age. To people who might not like engineering because they think engineering is like building cars, but there’s just so much more to it. Engineering is such a broad term, it’s introducing engineering to many people and trying to solve problems as well.”
This club will highlight among the different types of engineering that contribute to society.
“Last year I was enrolled in Engineering Design Presentation 1 class with Mr. Burnham, and I had a missing assignment about socially responsible engineering,” junior Zaman said. “I learned that socially responsible engineering is just maintaining a friendly work environment but also doing good things for the community.”
Part of what the club will do is show younger generations the world of engineering.
“When it comes to engineering, there’s so many types of engineering,” Chopra said. “Computer science, software engineering, civil engineering — here’s so many fields of engineering, and if you’re introduced to them at a young age, you can see what you like and it’ll be easier for you in the future.”
EFA is planning to become a nonprofit organization as soon as it opens as an official club.
“I like the student, Maheen,” Marlow said, “He’s awesome and sweet. I think he has a real goal in life and he’s planning on making this just more than a club. Eventually, he wants to build a whole nonprofit around it and I’m really into that. It spoke to me a little bit, so it didn’t matter that there wasn’t a lot of time. Because of Maheen’s vision for this, I was all in.”
The goal for the club is to reach all around the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and eventually the entirety of the United States.
“Maheen is the one who made the idea for [the club], I just added more thought into it and it just kept on going,” junior Vice President Shahmeer Mirza said. “Now we are here and we are trying to make this club a national thing.”
EFA club meetings will consist of discussions about various engineering topics and their relation to society.
“During the meetings, we will have open discussions and brainstorm ideas on how these specific fields of engineering can help our communities,” Zaman said. “It’s not only going to be serious productivity but a fun collaborative engaging manner. It’s another goal of mine that EFA has character in it.”
The nonprofit part of EFA is going to be based on the more “hands-on” part of the engineering world according to Maheen Zaman
“I see it as two different things when it comes to the club, it’s more of discussion and brainstorming ideas,” Zaman said. “Of course that’s going to be an element in the nonprofit but the nonprofit will be mainly hands-on experience and engineering.”
