Hope Weston supervises a demonstration of her human-powered vehicle during the College of Engineering's Senior Design Showcase on Thursday. The event was an opportunity for the students to display their team’s yearlong senior design project.

John Kelly photo

Pictured with their winning entry are (left to right): Rebecca Ahern, junior MSE; Matt McCrink, graduate student ME; Eric Nutsch, junior ME; Melissa Castaneda, junior ME; Chris Whitham, alumni ME; Alex Miller, junior MSE and co-captain; Landon Nye, sophomore ME; and Cody Blevins, sophomore ME and co-captain.

Aero design

COEN’s Aero Design Team took 7th place out of 35 teams in the Aero Design West international competition held April 4-8th in Texas. The annual event is sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers and Lockheed Martin. The team took their winning design on a long road trip to Fort Worth where they competed for the third year.

The Aero Design® competition is intended to provide undergraduate and graduate engineering students with a real-life engineering exercise. The competition has been designed to provide exposure to the kinds of situations that engineers face in the real work environment. First and foremost a design competition, students will find themselves performing trade studies and making compromises to arrive at a design solution that will optimally meet the mission requirements while still conforming to the configuration limitations.
The importance of interpersonal communication skills is sometimes overlooked, yet both written and oral communication skills are vital in the engineering workplace. To help teams develop these skills, a high percentage of a team's score is devoted to the design report and the oral presentation required in the competition.