WKU Engineering Students
Participate In Competitions

April 27, 2004

Bowling Green, Ky. - Engineering students at Western Kentucky University have participated in several competitions this spring with two teams advancing to national events.

"I'm really impressed with the performance of the students in these activities," said John Reis, engineering department head. "It's a tribute to their hard work and to the quality of the engineering programs at Western Kentucky."

In addition to civil engineering's concrete canoe team, which advanced to national competition for the ninth straight year, a team of mechanical engineering students advanced to a national robot competition.

Four Western teams from the Mechanical Engineering Junior Design class competed March 27 in the American Society for Mechanical Engineers Region VI Student Design competition in Lexington. The teams were required to design and build an autonomous robot capable of removing stimulated land mines from an obstacle course.

The team of Timothy Clayton of Tell City, Ind., Kathryn Hess of Auburn, J.D. McQueen of Alvaton and Christopher Rich of Bee Spring won the competition. The team will go to the national competition in Anaheim, Calif., in November.

A group of electrical engineering students participated in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Robot Competition for Southeast Conference in Greensboro, N.C., on April 10. The team had to build an autonomous robot that would hunt for objects using Morse code.

The team of Jessica Lassourreille of Edmonton, Stephen Miller of Smiths Grove, Jacob Huber of Springfield, Chris Jarboe of Woodburn and Brad Earle of Bowling Green placed 18th out of 33 teams.

Civil engineering's steel bridge team finished fourth overall and first in aesthetics at the American Society for Civil Engineers Ohio Valley Regional Conference Student Steel Bridge Competition April 2.
Team members were captain Michael O'Reilly of Hardinsburg, Travis Carrico of Springfield, Kyle Hunt of Morgantown, James Jones of Somerset, Jason Miles of Elizabethtown and Benjamin Kidd of Glasgow.

The concrete canoe team won the Ohio Valley Regional to advance to the national competition June 17-20 in Washington, D.C. The competition required the team to construct a concrete canoe and give an oral presentation, design paper and to participate in a canoe race.

Participating students were: Justin Flickinger of Glasgow; Jon Kemp of Auburn; Jared Nix, Shannon Hayes and Travis Spidel, all of Bowling Green; Matt Rogers of Columbia; Sara Noe and Tracy May, both of Louisville; Deneatra Hack and Kyle Hunt, both of Morgantown; Will McDonough of Calhoun; Darren Stewart of Caneyville; Travis Carrico of Springfield; James Jones of Somerset; and Sean Sheffer of Morganfield.

For more information, contact the Engineering Department at (270) 745-2461. 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.

-WKU-