RAPID
CITY, S.D. (April 27, 2016) – The 2016 concrete canoe team from the South
Dakota School of Mines & Technology will compete in the nationals for the
first time in 10 years after recently taking first overall in the regional
Rocky Mountain Conference.
The
MilkyWave from South Dakota Mines will compete at nationals to be held
at the University of Texas in Tyler on June 9. The concrete canoe competition
requires students to design and construct a concrete canoe, which is judged on
speed in sprint and endurance races, as well as appearance, structural
conformity of the finished product, a design paper and presentation.
The
winning canoe was part of the South Dakota Mines American Society of Civil
Engineers student chapter team, which placed second overall at the Rocky Mountain
Conference hosted earlier this month by the University of Colorado-Denver and
Metro State in Denver, and which also included the university’s steel bridge
team.
The
MilkyWave placed first overall in the final product, second in oral
presentation and third in design paper. The canoe team also placed second in
the men’s sprint, men’s endurance and coed sprint races, third in women’s
sprint and fourth in women’s endurance.
Participants
included captains, Sam Sorger and Drew Vance; officers, Dalton Lyons
(organization manager), Katie Reed (aesthetics) and Matt Seitzer (mix design);
paddlers, Megan Brown, Brigit Kelly, Melissa Montoya, Anna Larson, Drew Hinker,
Justin Slattery, Dalton Lyons and Sam Sorger; and faculty advisor, Chris
Shearer, Ph.D.. Additional participants included Zach Hansen, Jeremy Feist,
Caitlin Hone, Kathleen Ryan, Brylee Streeter, Erik Vik, Naomi, Marcus Cannon,
Taylor Green, Jamie Smith, Elizabeth Larsen, Gideon Bode, Chaz Kieffer, Kylie
Peyton, Kyle Carey, Laeken Stugelmeyer and Cody Schellinger.
The
steel bridge, Steeling the Show, competed with a boundary-pushing and
efficient design. The bridge included newly-designed interlocking connections
on the deck and similar interlocking connections to last year’s bridge in the
superstructure. The biggest challenge this year was in the setup of the
construction site. The site included a river that spanned the entire width of
the site as compared to the river with a causeway in last year’s competition.
The bridge was built with just two people on one side of the river. The team
then rotated the bridge to the other side in a daring maneuver. The bridge team
was one of two teams to build on one side, then innovatively move it to the
other.
Steel
bridge team participants included captains, Riley Olson and Shaun Preszler, and
builders, Cole Walters and Chris Romanjenko. Additional participants included
Chelsey Herber, Joe Hemmer, Jasmine Peiper, Jesse Parker, Nolan Johnson,
Kathleen Ryan, Megan Brown, Michael Dollarhide, Nicholas Claggett, Kevin Barry,
Chad Reimer, and Benjamin Braun. Andrea Surovek, Ph.D., is the steel bridge
team advisor.
The
Mystery Design members were Laeken Stugelmeyer, Chelsey Herber, Kenneth
Shaffner and Zach Hansen. Mystery Design was composed of two different events.
Their first task objective was to create a Rube Goldburg machine using simple
office materials to get a marble from one end of the table to the other with a
slight nudge. The marble was to start at table level and end at table level.
The second task objective was build a DaVinci Self-Supporting Bridge using only
a picture of the completed bridge as guidelines. Since this event is meant for
social networking, the team was split with other universities to work on the
most efficient design.
The
technical paper was written and presented by Joseph Updike and Timothy Felker.
The paper topic was on the use of hempcrete as a sustainable building material.
They placed third overall in the technical paper-presentation. The
non-technical paper on civil obedience was written by Jacob Oberpriller. He
placed second overall in the non-technical paper-presentation.
The
concrete canoe and steel bridge teams are part of the Center of Excellence for
Advanced Manufacturing and Production (CAMP), a student-centered, hands-on
engineering program. A key part of the CAMP experience involves designing,
building, testing and competing in a variety of engineering challenges. The
program actively combines the classroom experience where students apply their
developing technical skills in real-world situations that involve fundraising,
planning, deadlines, and international competitions where the teams test their
mettle against universities from around the world.
SD
Mines students competing in the competition were: Hunter Vincent, Zachary Hansen,
Jacob Oberpriller, Brylee Streeter, Chelsey Herber, Joe Hemmer, Riley Olson,
Shaun Preszler, Brigit Kelly, Sam Sorger, Dalton Lyons, Elizabeth Larsen,
Jasmine Peiper, Jesse Parker, Jamie Smith, Joseph Updike, Kenneth Shaffner,
Nolan Johnson, Kathleen Ryan, Drew Vance, Anna Larson, Justin Slattery, Jeremy
Feist, Drew Hinker, Katie Reed ,Gideon Bode, Michael Dollarhide, Marcus Cannon,
Melissa Montoya, Taylor Green, Megan Brown, Chaz Kieffer, Chris Romanjenko,
Matt Seitzer, Nicholas Claggett, Kylie Peyton, Kyle Carey, Laeken Stugelmeyer,
Caitlin Hone, Kevin Barry, Chad Reimer, Cole Walters, Benjamin Braun and Cody
Schellinger.
The
ASCE student chapter is advised by Chris Shearer, Ph.D., Jennifer Benning,
Ph.D., and practitioner advisor John Niemela. Shearer is the concrete canoe
advisor, and Andrea Surovek, Ph.D., is the steel bridge team advisor.