Penske Truck Leasing has donated a specially equipped 26-foot Freightliner M2 box truck to house and transport the new TechForce Foundation Mobile STEM Career Center. The Center is a traveling, hands-on exhibit designed to engage and help Gen Z discover a rewarding career path as professional technicians in the transportation field.
“Although we developed the STEM career activities over the past few years, we’ve been limited by our ability to deploy them – these are big and heavy activities. This Penske truck makes us highly mobile, and we are looking forward to hitting the road in 2022,” TechForce CEO Jennifer Maher said.
The new Mobile STEM Career Center will offer activities, including:
• Pit Stop Challenge – Race against the clock to see who can change the tires fastest on the front clip of a real NASCAR using the real power tools from the racing pits.
• Go Nutz – Match the fasteners (nuts) to the Snap-on wrenches.
• The Virtual V8 – Discover the inner workings of the virtual V-8 engine projected into the real world.
• Off the Line – Test reflexes on a real light tree from a drag strip starting line.
• Slot Car Racing – Discover how shape and weight can determine the winning car.
• High-tech circuits – Build a functioning circuitry with real circuit boards, wires, motors, and lights.
• How’s It Work – Discovery station crewed by instructors who demonstrate some common auto systems and maybe even some catastrophic failures.
• Model of Power – Try a hand at building a functioning scaled-down model of a V-8 engine.
• Cutaway V-10 – Check out the inner workings of a real high-performance V-10 engine.
• Code-A-Car – Write code to power miniature auto functions like lights and fans.
• Ford GT – See the Nicolas Cage Ford GT up-close.
• TechForce Network – Explore the free competitions, events, training and other resources designed especially for the next generation of techs.
For more information, visit techforce.org.
