Tag Archives: Jerry Richardson

UMKC & SCE to host 2015 National Student Steel Bridge Competition

Save the Date! UMKC & SCE have the honor of hosting the 2015 National Student Steel Bridge Competition which will be held here in Kansas City on May 22-23, 2015. From an initial field expected to number over 200 teams, the top scoring teams at the regional competitions will then advance to the national competition in Kansas City.

Our UMKC ASCE Student Chapter for the School of Computing and Engineering has been very active with regard to competing in Steel Bridge. Since 2001, our Steel Bridge team has competed in the NSSBC a total of 7 times. Their best showing was at the 2008 national competition in Florida where UMKC placed first in the Stiffness category and in the top 10 overall. For the past two years, the ASCE Student chapter (advised by Drs. John Kevern, and Jerry Richardson) has received letters of commendation from ASCE. We look forward to showcasing Kansas City to our nation’s future civil engineers and their faculty advisors.

Dr. Jerry Richardson Receives National Highway Institute Award for Fourth Consecutive Year

Dr. Jerry Richardson, Associate Professor at the UMKC School of Computing and Engineering, was recently announced as a winner of the National Highway Institute Instructor of Excellence Award for the fourth consecutive year.

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63rd Street Bridge Physical Model Being Built by Dr. Jerry Richardson

Being able to accurately predict water flow conditions and their impact on proposed bridge designs is vital to ensuring that a new bridge will be strong and long lasting. It is also vital to assessing the current and future condition of existing bridges. Dr. Jerry Richardson has been contracted by Water Resources Solutions to build a physical model of the water flow experienced by the existing 63rd street bridge over Brush Creek in Mission Hills to assess current flow conditions and to evaluate up to three proposed replacement bridges for this site. If you stop by the Fluid Mechanics lab, you likely find civil engineering senior Amanda Leipard working, under the supervision of Dr. Richardson, to create a rigid bed distorted Froud scale model of the current 63^rd Street bridge. The horizontal scale is 1:73 and the vertical scale and 1:24.

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SCE Caps Off Academic Year with Picnic

Celebrating the end of our academic year, our SCE family shared memorable moments and success stories at the 4th annual SCE picnic at Taliaferro Park on June 13, 2013. SCE faculty, staff, alumni board members, industry supporters and program advisory board members and our UMKC collaborators and supporters enjoyed the beautiful weather while renewing connections with each other. All agreed it has been a great year for SCE as we have engaged with our students, community and each other! We were also very proud to welcome and visit with the teachers attending the ASM Materials Camp for Teachers at SCE. Our cooks, SCE faculty Mark McClernon, Jerry Place and Jerry Richardson, made sure the 120 in attendance had as many brats and burgers as they wanted. They even discovered a better way to cook the veggie burgers – steamed on the grill – delicious.

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UMKC Steel Bridge Team Competes At Regionals

This year the Steel Bridge team competed at the Mid-Continent Conference Steel Bridge Regionals held at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (SIUE). The competition was held April 4, with a record number of teams, fourteen, attending from the Mid Continent Conference. This year our team, the SteelRoos, did remarkably well but fell short of the top three. Our SteelRoos build time was good and the bridge stiffness was very good, winning 3rd place. The one of a kind connections used for the bridge intrigued many participants. However, some key construction and dimensional penalties knocked our SteelRoos out of the running for the top honors. Co-Captains Taylor Christmas and Jessica Everhart and team members, Kevin Buck, Huy Dao, Mitchell Eutsler, Jon Lamanes, Paige Norris, Spencer Solon, Jade Rodell-Tipton, Megan Ryan conducted themselves in a professional manner and represented UMKC and SCE very well. Professors John Kevern and Jerry Richardson serve as faculty co-advisors for the team. Much was learned for next year and many of this year’s team members will be returning. We are all proud of them!

Jerry Richardson awarded 2011 NHI Instructor of Excellence Award

Professor Jerry Richardson received the Instructor of Excellence Award for 2011 from the National Highway Institute (NHI) for the THIRD consecutive year. The award is based on consistently high evaluation scores in the classroom (4.5 or above on a 5-point scale), a demonstrated commitment to the adult learning philosophy and for maintaining the highest standard of quality for transportation training. Only the top trainers receive this award each year. 2011 was a phenomenal year as 66 trainers (out of over 300 trainers) nationwide received this award in 2011with 300-400 different classes offered. Dr. Richardson is a certified instructor for NHI courses regarding river engineering, hydraulics and scour.

SCE Scholarship Students Give Thanks To Their Donors

“Without your generosity, we couldn’t educate some of what I consider to be the best and brightest students in the Kansas City region, the nation, and the world,” said Dean Kevin Truman as he thanked the donors attending the 2012 SCE Scholarship Luncheon which brought together SCE’s scholarship donors and their student scholars. Connecting our donors and students gave our SCE student scholars the opportunity to express their appreciation to their donors. Donors learned firsthand how their support helps our SCE computer science and engineering students and the impact it has on their scholarship students’ lives and careers. Student speaker, Kelsey Knoche, electrical and computer engineering senior, captured the hearts of all attending with her personal story of how important this support has been for her.

Christopher Kinzel, P.E. of HDR, a Kansas City engineering company, talked about the long-term benefits Kansas City engineering and computer science firms realize by supporting and encouraging the next generation of engineers, information technologists and computer scientists. He noted there are many ways companies and individuals can help. HDR endowed the HDR Scholarship in 2007 and it provides an internship opportunity.

This year, four newly endowed scholarships were recognized at the luncheon and their donors honored for their generosity and commitment to our computer science and engineering students. They are the 1) Bayer Scholarship; 2) Black & Veatch Scholarship; 3) Dave Hermance Memorial Scholarship sponsored by Toyota Motor Sales USA and 4) The Chandra Scholarship Fund. Minda Mason, SCE Director of Major Gifts, noted that SCE awarded 8 new scholarships this year and that these 4 newly endowed scholarships will continue to support deserving students in perpetuity.

SCE appreciates greatly all our scholarship donors. Thank you! We are proud of our scholars and appreciate how they are often our campus leaders, serving in key roles in student government, participating in community service and raising the level of academic performance in our classrooms.

SCE participates in UMKC Summer Blood Drive

Numerous UMKC staff and faculty members either donated blood at the 7/25/12 UMKC summer blood drive or helped get the word out about it, lending their support and communication channels to make the drive a success. SCE is proud our faculty and staff participated in drive which attracted 57 UMKC donors, with 29 first time donors. Fifty units of blood were collected, surpassing CBC’s goals for our first UMKC annual summer blood drive. Jane Vogl of SCE served as the CBC site coordinator for this drive. She noted how heartwarming it was to have donors make appointments with every appeal that went out and that the results are reflective of our giving, caring and socially responsible UMKC community. Teamwork was really important as the summer drive’s success relies heavily on UMKC staff and faculty donors.

ASCE Student Chapter Receives National Award!

The UMKC American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter received a Letter of Honorable Mention from ASCE national headquarters for “its outstanding activities as recorded in the 2011 Chapter Annual Report”. Activities by the chapter’s 50 or so members included professional development activities to improve internship prospects, volunteer activities such as Wyandotte county trail restoration, toys for tots, highway cleanup, and helping with a charity golf tournament, participating in the steel bridge competition at K-State, 5 meetings which highlighted the various areas of civil engineering, and Joint meetings with the professional Kansas City ASCE chapter, student American Public Works Association (APWA) chapter, and professional chapter of the local American Welding Society (AWS) chapter. SCE congratulates all our ASCE members, its President Kyle Dunning and the ASCE student chapter faculty advisors, John Kevern and Jerry Richardson.

Brian Hare & Jerry Richardson are 2012 SCE Good Teaching Award Recipients!

Two SCE faculty members were honored with 2012 Good Teaching Awards at the SCE Spring Awards Ceremony on April 26, 2012. They are Brian Hare, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Computer Science Electrical Engineering (CSEE) Department, and Dr. Jerry Richardson, Associate Professor in the Civil and Mechanical Engineering (CME) Department. Each year two faculty from SCE, one from CME and one from CSEE, are selected for a Good Teaching Award by the School’s graduating seniors.

The awards are well deserved. The CSEE Department Chair advised, “Brian Hare often receives comments from students like, ‘the best teacher I have taken a class from at UMKC,’ ‘excellent instructor’ and ‘my favorite teacher at UMKC.’ Brian’s devotion to his profession is highly commendable. He is very deserving of the CSEE Good Teaching Award.” According to the CME department chair, “Dr. Richardson has a true passion for teaching. His teaching ability and dedication are well known and have been highly respected throughout his career at UMKC.” This is the 3rd time since the establishment in 1993 of the Engineering Good Teaching award that Dr. Richardson has won the award!

SCE gratefully acknowledges the SCE Alumni Association Board for their support of the Good Teaching Awards. The SCE AA Board established an endowed fund to support the Engineering Good Teaching award and works each year with the dean to review the SCE students’ nominations and ratify recipients.