Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.—The only Mississippi showing of a major large-screen documentary celebrating human ingenuity that made possible the world’s engineering marvels will be screened Tuesday [April 25] at Mississippi State.
Free and open to all, “Dream Big: Engineering Our World” begins at 6 p.m. in the university’s Humphrey Coliseum.
Produced by California-based and Academy Award-nominated MacGillivray Freeman Films and narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges, the recently released production was underwritten by the American Society of Civil Engineers, in part to promote the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics—known to most as STEM—education.
In addition to skyscrapers, underwater robots, China’s Great Wall and other achievements, the 42-minute film features the internationally recognized “Sundancer” solar-powered vehicle developed from the ground up at Houston High School’s Career and Technology Education Center.
Student members of the Solar Car Race Team, along with HHS administrators and faculty members, have been invited to campus as special guests.
Winners of more than a dozen national competitions, the Chickasaw Countians recently were in Washington, D.C., for the premiere of “Dream Big.” In 2015, they took the 16-foot vehicle engineered under the guidance of teacher and project founder Keith Reese to Australia for the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, a race of more than 1,700 miles to determine the most effective sun-powered human transport.
The youngest competitors in BWSC’s 30-year history, the Mississippians also became the first high schoolers to win the Adventure Class. Additionally, they set the record at 252 for most miles raced in a single day.
In a review, Variety magazine film critic Nick Schager heaped praise on “Dream Big,” calling it “a rousing, and ravishing, call-to-engineering-arms for future generations” that “crafts an engaging portrait of people seeking answers to contemporary and future questions.” Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVNsT8BIM8 for a video trailer.
The special showing at Mississippi State is made possible by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the university’s Bagley College of Engineering, along with the civil engineering society’s MSU student chapter, Mississippi Section and North Mississippi Branch.
For more about ASCE, visit www.asce.org.
Details about the Solar Car Race Team and its innovative creation may the viewed at www.sundancersolarcar.blogspot.com.
Information about MSU’s civil and environmental engineering department is found at www.cee.msstate.edu, or by contacting department head Dennis Truax at 662-325-7187 or truax@cee.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.