UE Team Accels in ASCE Competition
April 27, 2008

Students from the University of Evansville (UE) competed in the Great Lakes Regional Conference on April 24-26, 2008. The 2008 conference was hosted by UE’s American Society of Civil Engineers student chapter. Civil engineering students participated in the concrete canoe, steel bridge, concrete baseball bat, and geotechnical competitions. Fifteen schools in the region attended the conference, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Marquette University, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bradley University, the University of Notre Dame, Tri-State University, Valparaiso University, Purdue University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, the University of Southern Indiana, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and UE.

The concrete canoe team was led by Project Manager Mary Dial and construction manager Brady Blessinger. Civil engineering students worked throughout the school year designing, testing, and building their canoe, Blade, which placed second in the final product category which is based on construction quality. Only Wisconsin, the five-time National Concrete Canoe Competition Champion had a better product according to the engineering judges at the event. Aces Concrete Canoe placed fourth in the women's sprint, second in the men’s sprint, and third in the co-ed sprint. The team's design report won second place behind the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The competition was very close with the final standing based on the races, the design paper, an oral presentation and the final product. The University of Wisconsin-Madison placed first, and UE was edged out by the Milwaukee School of Engineering for second place.

The steel bridge team was led by project manager’s Rebekah Campbell and Matt Chenault. The steel bridge team designed, built, and tested their structure which placed eighth in the competition. Each steel bridge was judged on construction speed, lightness, stiffness, economy, efficiency, and a project display. Pictured above are Tim Catron and Rebekah Campbell Constructing the steel bridge.

The UE geotechnical team placed third behind the Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette in a competition that required teams to design and construct a retaining wall.