Amid choruses of "Happy New Year!" and wearing sparkly glasses and headbands, Joey Denison, Stevie Irvine, Kaylee Finkelstein and other volunteers from the Make It Happen organization led teams of elementary school students through "Times Square" and engineered excitement for STEM. As part of Lost Creek Elementary School's annual Field Day, Make It Happen designed an interactive replica of the notorious Times Square New Year's Eve Ball Drop. The "Road Trip USA"-themed event invited the elementary school students to build their collaboration skills at 15 stations, each presenting activities to represent a different state. 

In "New York," at the Make It Happen station, the elementary school students worked in teams to answer trivia questions, and, when they answered correctly, they received a gear to place at the base of the ball. When the team correctly placed each of the gears, they "activated" the Ball Drop and counted down to the new year. 

The ball, powered by a hidden garage door opener, also served as an opportunity to introduce the young minds to other engineering concepts, including the design thinking required to make a moving object appear both flat and spherical. 

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"Being able to be part of this really formative educational experience for these kids is really awesome," said Denison, the Make It Happen president. "I'm really happy to be able to give them this educational and cultural learning opportunity. 

Make It Happen, the "competition team that never loses," develops social-impact projects for community clients.

"We use our engineering to help local people in our community with problems that wouldn't be solved otherwise," explained Irvine, a first-year biomedical engineering major who helped lead the ball drop project.

Make It Happen's project helped Lost Creek students ring in their curiosity about New York, engineering, and teamwork while celebrating the end of the academic year and the eve of summer.