WKU Engineering Student First At ASME District Conference

March 31, 2008

Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University’s mechanical engineering juniors and seniors participated in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers District C Student Design Competition at the University of Missouri in Columbia on March 29. 

Ten students competed in various professional events at the conference, which was attended by more than 150 students from schools in the Upper Plains through the Ohio Valley states.

Josh DeArmond of Greenville took first place at the ASME Old Guard Oral Competition for his senior team project to design and build a biogenerated greenhouse heating system. DeArmond competed against students from Wisconsin, Purdue, Missouri, North Dakota and others. 

In the ASME Post Competition, Justin Morris of Malden, Ill., presented his senior team project to design and build a biodiesel facility on campus.

Six students from the Mechanical Engineering Junior Design class participated in the Student Design Competition, which required teams to design and build an automated window cleaning device. Other schools competing included Nebraska, Michigan Tech, North Dakota, Minnesota State, and Kentucky’s Paducah engineering program. 

The two WKU teams included Derrick Bartlett of Philpot, Justin Clark of Bowling Green, Ismet Handzic of Bowling Green, Robert Hernandez  of White House, Tenn., Lonnie Pike of Flaherty and William Walker of Somerset. Also attending the conference were juniors Bobby Lindsey of Morgantown and Mensur Paocic of Bowling Green.

Kevin Schmaltz, who co-teaches the Junior Design class along with Chris Byrne, said: “Josh DeArmond’s performance in the Old Guard Competition was very satisfying.  This was the first year we entered the Old Guard and Poster competitions, and our two seniors both did a commendable job. We were also pleased with the effort of our juniors at the student design competition. This was the most technically challenging competition in several years, and our juniors’ efforts compared favorably with devices built as senior projects by other schools.

The quality of our students’ efforts, their professional participation at regional events, and the continued success at this event speaks to the quality of students in the ME program.”
               
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.