Lehigh Expo Showcases Students' Creativity

Scores of Lehigh students were able to showcase their creativity and celebrate semesters-long work as the Lehigh Expo unfolded Thursday in the newly renovated Building C on the Mountaintop campus.

About 600 students from across disciplines, presenting individually and in teams, demonstrated their projects and designs to fellow students, faculty, staff and administrators, as well as those from the surrounding Lehigh community. 

Among the presenters were architecture students who designed a pedestrian foot bridge that would link North and South Bethlehem, students who developed a device to locate children with autism who might become lost, teams of students who built Formula 1 and single-seat, off-road vehicles and students who designed child-proof safety caps.

Many of the projects were outcomes of capstone courses that leverage intense study in a chosen field. Others grew out of students’ passions to build, make and do.

Peter Nguyen ’18 and fellow students displayed items made from sheet metal from their product design class: birdhouses, bowls, necklaces, tie clips and bookmarks. The items also are being sold at the National Museum of Industrial History in South Bethlehem.

Emily Randolph ’19 had worked with a team of eight students to develop Danielle’s Buddy, a device that would attach to the pants or shoelaces of a child with autism and send a signal to caretakers if the child wandered from a particular area or became lost. She said the device would work with GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi or cellular units. The team plans to work on a prototype during the fall 2018 semester.

While Randolph enjoyed telling others about her team’s project, she expressed an appreciation for the breadth of work on display at the university-wide Expo.

“I got to see other work I would have never know about,” she said. “I had no idea so many people we’re doing such amazing work. There’s a lot of really cool stuff here.”

Photos by Christa Neu