Design Contest
April 02, 2007
Bowling
Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University mechanical engineering students placed second in the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers District C Student Design Competition on March 31.
The WKU team of Zachary Pearl of Bowling Green, Ryan Simpson of Glasgow, Brent Stubblefield of Bowling Green and DJ Thompson of White House, Tenn., placed second in the competition to design and build a human-powered water purification system. The goal was to purify the most water in one hour.
Two other WKU teams from the Mechanical Engineering Junior Design Class competed in the event at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Twenty-five other schools in the district competed, including Purdue, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Rose-Hulman, Southern Illinois and Kentucky.
“Our juniors did a tremendous job again this year. WKU was the only school to produce multiple successful designs,” said Kevin Schmaltz, who co-teaches the Junior Design class along with Robert Choate. “This was a very arduous competition, and by the end of the hour less than half of the devices were working to purify water. All three of the WKU devices performed flawlessly to the very end. The high quality of our students devices and their enthusiastic participation speaks to the quality of students in the ME program.”
The other WKU teams were:
*Devin Feese of Knifley, Andrew Hughes of Bowling Green, Justin Morris of Malden, Ill., Ross Cassity of Versailles.
*Adam Ayer of Hartford and Nathaniel Butts of Bowling Green.
Other WKU students attending the district conference were Stuart Cook of Cadiz, Josh Dearmond of Greenville, Kyle Hampton of Auburn and Josh McCombs of Bowling Green.
More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
For information, contact Kevin Schmaltz at (270) 745-8859.
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