June 06, 2001

WKU Concrete Canoe Team Ready For National Competition

Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University engineering students have the "Aquavette" geared up for next weekend's 14th annual National Concrete Canoe Competition in San Diego.

Students are hoping to improve on last year's 10th-place national finish, WKU's best ever, but team adviser Matthew Dettman expects a challenge when 24 of the top engineering schools compete June 14-16 at San Diego State University.

"The concrete canoe competition is sort of the Super Bowl of engineering competitions," said Dettman, a civil engineering professor.

Among the other national finalists are two-time defending champion Clemson, North Carolina State, Wisconsin, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, California-Berkeley, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Michigan Tech, Drexel, Texas-El Paso, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, University of Alabama-Huntsville, Washington State and Virginia Tech.

The concrete canoe is putting Western's engineering program and its students in the national spotlight, Dettman said. "If you look at the top concrete canoe teams in the country, it's also parallel to the top engineering schools in the country. To put us in that environment is just very good for Western," he said. "The civil engineering community sees us as a player and a competitor and that's good for Western."

Western advanced to the national competition by winning its sixth consecutive Ohio Valley Regional this spring.

The concrete canoe competition is 70 percent academic (display, oral presentation and design paper) and 30 percent athletic (five races). Students' written, visual and verbal communication skills are a key part of the academic portion, Dettman said.

Teams use a six-page design paper, a five-minute oral presentation and a visual display to communicate to judges how the project was completed including research, canoe hull design, concrete mix design, construction process and management of team members, budget and time.

"Everything that went into the design, research and construction management all have to be in the paper, in the oral presentation and in the display," Dettman said.

The concrete canoe project gives students practical experience, management training and problem-solving skills for the real world, Dettman said. "The competition is really not about building canoes, it's about building engineers," he said.

"Actually building a canoe that floats and looks good is a success regardless of how we do at the regional and nationals," Dettman said.

Concrete canoe team members include Scott Neighbors, Chad Ford and Shawn Herman, all Bowling Green seniors; Clay Ellis, a Beaver Dam senior; Luke Ritter, a Bowling Green junior; Jason Sparks, a Woodburn senior; Valerie Lynch, a senior from County Cork, Ireland; Darren Wheat, a Scottsville senior; Jon Diemer, a freshman from Franklin, Tenn.; Ryan Pregel, a senior from Gallatin, Tenn.; Jerod Kaufman, a senior from Kenai, Alaska; Deneatra Flener, a Morgantown junior; Brian Bidwell, a senior from Conneaut, Ohio; Chris Bates, a Sacramento senior; and Matt Shockley, a Mount Washington junior.
More information about Western's concrete canoe team is available at http://www.wku.edu/concretecanoe.

More information about the national competition, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers and Master Builders, is available on the Internet at http://www.masterbuilders.com/MB/static/canoe/default.htm.

For more information, contact Matt Dettman at (270) 745-2462. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.