Celebrating UPEI Engineering Excellence, April 22
This Saturday, April 22, UPEI will be hosting a public reception to showcase the success of its Engineering students. The reception will take place at the Rodd Charlottetown Hotel from 6:30 to 8:00pm.
The event will begin with recognition of UPEI's team of second-year students who won both the Atlantic and National engineering design competitions this spring. Caleb Curtis, Gabriel Landry, Daniel Palmer, and Hannah Sutherland will be demonstrating their winning crane design which gained them two awards at the National competition in Montreal.
Dr. Roger Gordon, Dean of Science at UPEI, is proud to be celebrating the team's accomplishments. "Consistently, our Engineering students perform well against students from some of the larger universities in these competitions. This year's outstanding performance speaks to the excellence of our Engineering program, its faculty and its students."
Nine other design projects will also be on display throughout the reception. These are the term's work of Dr. Andrew Trivett's first- year Engineering class.
"The Engineering profession exists to solve problems for people and society, so our program tries very hard to challenge the students to do just that from the very beginning. The problems our students have solved are real, and are helping researchers, business, and the community. Our young engineering students are showing the level of impact that engineers can have on this Island," says Trivett.
Groups of four to six students strive to fill real needs that exist in the community. The students work with individuals or groups to understand each problem, and then design and build a solution. Some of the projects this year include aerial photography using a kite system, tags to monitor eel populations, and a rear-view mirror system to reduce accidents associated with backing up vehicles.
Megan Mugford's group has converted a gasoline lawnmower engine to run on alcohol. The engine is now fueled on 100 per cent ethanol. Ethanol burns more completely than gasoline. The group also compared emissions for the engine, as well as power output, to the traditional gas engine. Megan says, "this has been a great learning experience. Throughout the term, we have encountered the problems that professional engineers face each day. We have learned that with hard work and determination, anything can be accomplished."
Two of the student groups worked directly with Beach Grove Home to design a new pill-crusher and an ergonomic medi-chart to house it. These projects may lead to summer jobs for two of the UPEI students who would be working to implement these products for use at Beach Grove.
