Smart Kids
Youth Experiences at the U of U
Welcome! The University of Utah offers many different learning experiences and activities for youth of all ages. If you're a parent searching for a class for your children or an educator wanting additional opportunities to help your students learn, this is the site for you!
Speaking to Youth
by Mark Fuller,
CEO of WET Design and designer of the cauldron for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
A University graduate, he has designed more than 100 fountains for venues ranging
from Disney's Epcot Center to Tokyo Dome to the Bellagio Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas,
which features the largest fountain ever built.
Learning has always been fun for me. I like building projects from what I learn.
I have built them in my basement from the time I was a kid.
My first neat job was building special effects for Disney. I got the job because
of all the pictures I had of projects I had built while at the U. I had built a fire-billowing
alter for a theatre class at Pioneer Memorial Theatre. After class, with the help
of one of the professors, I built an electronic circuit board in the Physics Department
that made any light bulb flicker like a bonfire. The only difference between my school
fire projects and my company's Olympic Cauldron "project" was just the really big
jump in size.
Things you learn stay with you. When I was studying engineering at the U, in class
the teacher showed us a small plastic model of water spilling off of a dam. At the
bottom of the spillway, the water made a big wave, called a hydraulic jump. About
20 years later, when I was trying to think of a fun, new fountain idea for a shopping
center plaza, I remembered that class and used the same idea to create a big wave
fountain for a project in Newport Beach, Calif.
To me the coolest thing about the U was that I could pick a lot of interesting classes
and learn things just because they were really fascinating. I eventually found something
out of the ordinary to do with all that learning.
