Imagine a world without automobile superhighways or information superhighways. Try to think about not having electricity or running water.

Anything and everything people do to get through the day has somehow been affected by engineering. National Engineers Week, Feb. 17-23, recognizes engineerings’ contributions.

Iowa State’s College of Engineering, after holding its own “E-Week” in the fall, will also participate in the nation-wide recognition of engineers.

Two events of the week are the Spring Engineering Career Expo and a demonstration of Iowa State’s virtual reality lab.

Tom Ligouri, program manager in engineering administration, said the fall and spring career fairs originally had different purposes. He said the fall event was for employers searching for full-time employees, while the spring fair was for options. Now the spring fair has migrated to full-time job searches as well, Ligouri said.

The number of companies participating in the spring expo is a little lower than before, Ligouri said, but Iowa State is still doing better than some other universities.

One of the reasons Ligouri gave for a smaller decline at Iowa State was that with the large number of students participating, employers can recruit from a large number of engineering majors.

Carolina Cruz-Neira, associate professor at the Virtual Reality Applications Center, said the event is not only a tutorial, but it will also show “all the cool stuff” that can be done with virtual reality.

“The presentation is to give people a sense of what we do here and motivate some students to enter this field and professionals to consider virtual reality as a tool for their work,” she said.

Students will demonstrate different applications in what Cruz-Neira said she hopes will “get people excited about technology.” It will also be broadcast over the Iowa Communications Network.

The Iowa Communications Network will play a role in other events Wednesday. Fourteen high schools will compete via the network in a tower-building competition using spaghetti noodles and gumdrops. Also conducted over the network will be a workshop for teachers showing the use of engineering and technology-related activities in school. The workshop is being held jointly with the University of Iowa engineering college.