University of Wisconsin, Madison, Defends the Title!
The 2007-2008 Academic Design Competition, hosted by Metcalf & Eddy (M&E), concluded on Thursday, May 15th with a team from the University of Wisconsin, Madison garnering the top prize. The UW Madison team, defending their title from last year, received a trophy with cash awards for both the students and faculty advisor.
Student teams, judges, and M&E staff
Sixteen teams from across North America entered this year’s competition which provides students the chance to solve real-life engineering problems prepared by M&E. The teams were formed primarily as part of the participated schools’ capstone design course. The 16 submissions were evaluated and shortlisted down to five for a round of video-cast interviews. Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST) and the UM Madison were named as the two finalists and invited to M&E’s New York City office for the final presentation. Members of both teams selected a copy of one of Metcalf & Eddy’s two wastewater engineering textbooks as mementos of participating in the competition.
The design competition was launched during the 2003-2004 academic year as part of M&E’s goal of providing students with opportunities to experience real-world engineering practice, and developing better relationships with academic institutions. The number of participating teams has since grown every year to this year’s record number. M&E reviewers noted that not only the number of participants has increased each year, but also the level of analysis and sophistication of the submittals has improved each year, making for a tight competition.
Teams were challenged with a number of criteria, which included the treatment process description, justification of selected technology, cost comparison, and presentation of the results to the client, i.e. the judges for the competition. UW Madison’s winning entry proposed a design of a wastewater treatment plant upgrade that would achieve very stringent discharge levels and provide an option of beneficial reuse of the treated plant effluent. The report and presentation also included a detailed design description supported by performance and economic analyses.
The judges for the final presentation were Kevin Clark and Allen Deur of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP); Taisuke Soda of McGraw-Hill Professional; Thomas Dickmann, AECOM vice president; and William Pfrang, M&E vice president. “They are mostly undergraduate students, and it was quite impressive to see the caliber of the graduating environmental engineering students,” said Allen Deur of NYCDEP. “This is also very important to having the best talent devoted to solving growing environmental challenges,” he added.
During their visit to M&E’s offices for the final interview, both teams exchanged experiences from the design competition, plans for their future, and the excitement of being exposed to real-world engineering. At the luncheon following the award ceremony, students approached William Pfrang, who managed the project from which the design problem was developed, to hear the real constraints he faced during the project and the engineering decisions that were made for the project. Professor Jianmin Wang, the faculty advisor of the runner-up MST team, said “even though the result was not what we hoped for, the students learned so much from this design project, and in that sense all students were winners.”
Contact: Ryujiro.Tsuchihashi@m-e.aecom.com
