Spring Break
Engineering students shine in statewide competition, take second place for concrete canoe construction
Sheena Tahilramani
State Hornet
Eight schools attended the annual competition this year in which they designed, built and raced full-size concrete canoes that were judged on design, quality, written presentation and racing performance.
"It’s basically to gain experience with project design, management and team work. It’s applying knowledge from class to a project.
The students get to do their own thing, so it’s creative too," said James Pangburn, ASCE student chapter President.
The competition consisted of four main components: the formal technical report, the display, a five-minute judged technical presentation and the canoe races.
"The display has to have a theme. This year our theme was Sacramento Sting. The canoe was yellow with black stripes on it. It was cool, it looked like a bee," Pangburn said.
In order to advance to the races, each canoe had to pass a "dunk test," during which the canoe was completely submerged in water and expected to successfully return to the surface.
"It went up really slow. It was a build up, and when it finally came up we were really happy," Pangburn said.
In determining which school had the best boat, judges placed strong emphasis on the academic components of the competition, which included the formal report, display and technical presentation.
"More of the competition is based on academic performance. You can have a substandard canoe, which is what we had, but you can have a good report and still come out strong. We took them on the smarts," Pangburn said.
The team finished behind the University of California, Berkeley, who will advance to the national competition.
"We came in way above our expectations. We are very excited," said Matt Wilson, concrete canoe project manager.
The team received $1,300 from Associated Students, Inc.’s Dollars for Organizations & Clubs, $1,000 from a CSUS Foundation grant, $1,000 from the ASCE Sacramento section, and $750 from the Sacramento ASCE/Younger Member Forum to help pay for costs associated with the competition.
Other schools that participated included Chico State, Fresno State, San Francisco State, San Jose State, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the University of Nevada, Reno.
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