is an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology at Purdue University, where he has taught for eight years. He has three years of industrial experience with Agilent Technologies and over 25 years of combined active and reserve service in the United States Air Force. Abstract October 1 st , 2010 was the date of Purdue-South Bend's 2 nd annual Project Lead the Way Conference for 101 local high school students, giving them some hands-on experience with projects in EET,

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... T, and IT. There was also a careers session and a campus tour. This paper provides some general background about the conference and its participants, then describes the EET session in detail, including the student-created project that was its centerpiece. The project, which was created by a sophomore EET student, compares the relative efficiency of two different forms of motor control: resistive and pulse-width-modulated. This project was implemented using Multisim version 11, and the data collection and plotting was performed with MS Excel 2007. In addition to the project, feedback from the teachers who brought their students to this year's conference is presented, as well as how the EET session format was modified to accommodate feedback from the previous year. Conference background Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is an organization that partners with middle schools and high schools across the nation to prepare students for post-secondary education and subsequent careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). 1 The Purdue University-South Bend annual PLTW Conference is an outreach program targeting these students from local high schools. The specific goals of the conference are to: 1. Engage them in some fun and interesting activities to spur their interest in technology; 2. Inform them of our degree options available locally, and about related careers; 3. Introduce them to campus; and 4. Motivate better high school study by linking the technical activities to math and science. The conference is also a nice recruiting tool for this campus. The high school students and teachers enjoy the day and take that excitement back to their respective schools. Moreover, the 2010 conference received news coverage by three local TV stations and the city newspaper. These are big benefits. Although Purdue University is very well-known, people normally associate it with the main campus. Since Purdue-South Bend is integrated into the Indiana University-South Bend campus, many locals are not even aware of our presence in the area. The advertisement serves a dual purpose of raising awareness and informing the local populace of the interesting/exciting activities happening on our campus. The first PLTW Conference was in the fall of 2009. Twenty students were invited from each of four local high schools. Since two of the schools did not fill all of their slots, there was a total of about 70 participants. In the second go-round in the fall of 2010 the conference was expanded to Page 22.530.2