The University of Missouri-Kansas City Volker campus will transform into a battlefield of the brains next week, as the School of Computing and Engineering celebrates Engineering Week with competitions involving paper flying machines, popsicle-stick bridges, newspaper-constructed chairs and several dozen eggs.

Each spring, UMKC and countless other engineering institutions across the nation take part in annual Engineering Week festivities to raise public awareness and appreciation of engineers’ contributions to society. UMKC’s activities will offer a slew of high-energy competitions.

Students will battle gravity as they compete in the paper flying machine contest at 1 p.m. from the third floor atrium of Flarsheim Hall, while others will test their brute strength in a tug-a-war on the Quadrangle. Civil engineering students also will put their smarts to the test in the build-a-bridge contest, in which the structures will be built from popsicle sticks and the bridge capable of carrying the most weight will be declared the winner.

The first round of the ever-favorite egg drop contest begins when dozens of Grade A beauties will drop three stories from the Flarsheim Hall atrium to meet either doom or victory, depending on the strength of the student-built contraptions in which they’ll make their descent. Those that survive will compete in the championship round.

A new contest has also been added to the roster of events this year.
Following the final-round egg drop competition Thursday afternoon,
students will be challenged to build chairs capable of holding human
weight using only newspapers.

Jared Bayne, 2009 BS Electrical Computer Engineering, and Sean Comer, 2009 BS Civil Engineering, were accepted by the U.S. Navy into the Naval Nuclear Power Officers Candidate Program (NUPOC). Upon graduation from college, they will attend Officer Candidate School and after commissioning as an officer, they will attend the Naval Nuclear Power School (NNPTC) in South Carolina to complete a 24-week, graduate level course of study in science and technology designed to provide theoretical knowledge of nuclear power. Upon completion of the graduate coursework, they are then sent to “prototype”, which is hands-on training at an operational nuclear power plant. After all the training is completed, they will oversee nuclear engineering operations and navigational duties on a nuclear submarine. Jared Bayne also received the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Honor Recipient Award (only nine were awarded this spring across campus).