Starting Up Outreach

While our club mainly focuses on competition and overclocking, one of our newest endeavors is an outreach program. One of the risks of competitive overclocking is that sometimes you end up killing your hardware. Our outreach program has turned that into something self-sustaining ,we use all of our “dead” hardware as hands-on learning tools for K-12 students.

The idea first sparked in Fall ‘24 during a car ride back from Intel with our then–Event Coordinator (now President) and our club advisor. Like most ideas, it started off bare-bones with no real structure, just potential. Over time, it began to take shape. We started designing preliminary activities for different age groups, focusing on how to introduce students to engineering concepts without being overly technical. Our goal was to get hardware into students’ hands and let them learn through experience.

By Spring term, the idea gained momentum. Dr. Gess, working on the National Science Foundation’s FuSe Chillers Project, wanted to use our activities as part of the project’s broader impacts component. That partnership helped validate and expand the outreach concept. Then, in Summer ‘25, the College of Engineering reached out with an incredible opportunity, to launch the on-campus version of our outreach program.

Our first official outreach event featured a team of three: Ashley, Alec, and Dr. Gess. Alec, a club alumnus, was quick to jump in when asked. The two main activities we ran were PC Puzzles and Gigahertz Gliders.

PC Puzzles teaches students how to assemble computer components step by step,including CPUs, GPUs, and RAM, to build confidence and familiarity with hardware. Gigahertz Gliders introduce overclocking concepts through paper airplanes. Students start with a baseline design representing the “silicon lottery,” where some planes perform slightly better than others. Then, through multiple rounds of testing and redesigning, they learn how iteration and experimentation lead to better performance , just like tuning a system for overclocking.

While activities evolve depending on age group and school, PC Puzzles will always remain a core part of our program. It’s a powerful way to build technological literacy, especially for students who may not know much about computers, engineering, or even college opportunities. We want to show them what’s possible and that STEM is for everyone.

This all comes together as we prepare to take our outreach program beyond campus, sharing our passion for technology and problem-solving with students across Oregon.

Our second official outreach event featured a team of two: Ashley and Donovan (Vice-President). While the two main activities remained the same. However we were able to include more people from our internal team which helps us continue this effect of seeing how much of an impact we are making on these kids.

• Outreach