Accomplishments

ASCE Concrete Canoe Team 2014

Humboldt

2014 Broader Impacts Essay Competition

Every year the graduating seniors at the Colorado School of Mines are asked to write an essay. This year the essay was to be written on how engineers modify behavior through design. After all of the essays are submitted they are reviewed by a board to select the top ten. These are then submitted to another board which reviews them and selects first, second, and third. I was privileged enough to have my essay selected as one of the top ten, and then later was selected as first place. The subject matter that I chose to write on was an inspirational movement out of Europe. My essay can be downloaded below.

The heritage of this competition extends back more than 50 years. Every year, civil engineering schools from around the nation come together to test not only their engineering skills but also their physical abilities. After a grueling application process, eight members were selected for the team, including myself. Over the next 8 months our team would put in over 2200 man hours to design, cast, and race a canoe made entirely of reinforced concrete. Some of the design challenges we faced required us to go above and beyond what was expected so that we could have a competitive canoe. Somewhere between designing a concrete mix with a density less than water and quantifying complex calculations due to our non-isometric hull geometry, we discovered a passion for hard work and large reward. It is obvious that any engineering student knows how to work hard. The truly amazing part of this project was that we learned how to enjoy the hard work and in the end reaped the reward. Our team placed 4th in the 2014 ASCE regional Concrete Canoe competition in Fort Collins Colorado. Both our competition paper and final design review can be viewed below.