UE Students Compete in ASCE Great Lakes Regional Conference
April 30, 2007

Students from the University of Evansville traveled to Purdue University April 26-28 to compete in the Great Lakes Regional Conference, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Twenty-seven members of the UE student chapter of ASCE, accompanied by faculty advisors Dr. James Allen, Prof. Chris Gwaltney, and Dr. Mark Valenzuela, participated in the concrete canoe, steel bridge, concrete Frisbee, and ethics paper competitions. Schools in the region include the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School fo Engineering, Marquette University, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Bradley University, the University of Notre Dame, Tri-State University, Valparaiso University, Purdue University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, the University of Southern Indiana and the University of Detroit-Mercy.

The concrete canoe team was led by Project Manager Blair Bozoarth and Assistant Project Manager Mary Dial. Civil engineering students worked throughout the school year designing, testing, and building their 18-foot, 170-lb canoe, High Octane. Aces Concrete Canoe placed third in the women's slalom and endurance event with the team of Jennifer Blankenship, Mary Dial, and Lauren Ramsey. The men's slalom and endurance team, consisting of Bozoarth, Brady Blessinger, and Kyle Shatto, paddled hard for a third-place finish. The men's sprint team, Brian Meunier and Shatto, also took third place. The team's design report won third place behind second place University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and first place University of Wisconsin-Madison. UE was able to best Illinois in the final product division based on construction quality. Only Wisconsin, the four-time National Concrete Canoe Competition Champion had a better product according to the four engineering judges at the event. The competition was very close with the final standing based on the races, the design paper, an oral presentation and the final product. A second place finish would have meant a third trip to Nationals for Aces Concrete Canoe, but it was not meant to be. The University of Wisconsin-Madison placed first, and UE was edged out by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for second place.

The steel bridge team was led by Project Manager Amanda Ranck. An energetic group of civil and mechanical engineering students worked very hard this year to design and fabricate a 20-foot long steel bridge weighing 378 pounds. For the first time ever, the students met all design, fabrication, and load testing requirements while achieving a team-best construction time of sixteen minutes during the competition; this beat their previous best time by more than two minutes. Their assembly time was fast enough to rank the team 4th overall in the time of construction category, less than sixty seconds behind third place. The competition team consisted of civil engineering seniors Amanda Ranck and Matt Melton, juniors Rebekah Campbell and Jennifer Blankenship, freshmen Matt Chenault and Ryan Farnum, and mechanical engineering freshman Slavic Velet. The team was excited by their 8th place finish in the overall competition and is eagerly setting their sights on next year’s competition.

Juniors Nick Foley, Matt Holden and Rebekah Campbell entered the concrete Frisbee contest and won third place for distance thrown and durability. Their 2-lb Frisbee was thrown three times for distances over 60 feet by Foley.