SCE civil engineering professors, Drs. ZhiQiang Chen and John Kevern were invited speakers at the March 20, 2014 Missouri Society of Professional Engineers Western Chapter (MSPE WC) monthly meeting. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Sean Rivers
SCE students experience engineer’s tour of KCP&L Iatan Power Plant
Fifteen SCE engineering students received a tour of the largest coal-fired generating power plant in Missouri, the KCP&L Iatan Power Plants, consisting of two power stations, Iatan Unit 1 and Iatan Unit 2. Continue reading
DBIA Student Chapter Wins Regional Competition for Second Consecutive Year
The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) student chapter at UMKC recently won the regional DBIA Student Competition for the second year in a row. The team consisted of four UMKC students and two faculty advisors.
Timothy Hines and Sean Rivers 2012-2013 Student LEAP Award Recipients
Congratulations to Timothy (Tim) Hines and Sean Rivers! They are UMKC SCE’s 2012-2013 Student Leadership Excellence Achievement Program (LEAP) Award winners. Each year, the student LEAP award is earned by the two Missouri Society of Professional Engineers (MSPE) student chapter members that write the best 300 – 1,000 word essays on engineering ethics. This year the question addressed in the student essays was based on this scenario “Is it unethical to develop an evening part-time job unrelated to your full-time engineering position, and why, or how do you resolve this professional obligation issue?”
Tim & Sean were honored at the March 21, 2013 dinner/presentation that our UMKC MSPE student chapter hosted for the MSPE WC. Their names will be added to the LEAP Award Recipient plaque housed in Flarsheim Hall. Included with each award is a $50.00 gift certificate. The annual LEAP Award was established by the MSPE WC in 2005. In addition to the two student LEAP award winners, one SCE faculty each year is the recipient of the faculty Leadership Excellence Achievement Program (LEAP) award. The UMKC School of Computing and Engineering faculty 2012-2013 LEAP award winner is Ceki Halmen, P.E., Assistant Professor in SCE’s Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department. He was awarded the LEAP Award by the student members of the MSPE/NSPE. The faculty LEAP Award recognizes one SCE faculty per year for “demonstrated mentoring abilities that encourage students to seek leadership excellence in the engineering profession.”
Ceki Halmen 2012-2013 Faculty LEAP Award Recipient
Congratulations to Ceki Halmen, P.E., Assistant Professor in SCE’s Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department, and winner of the annual faculty Leadership Excellence Achievement Program (LEAP) Award which was established by the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers Western Chapter (MSPE WC) in 2005. The LEAP award recognizes annually the SCE faculty, as determined by MSPE student chapter members via secret ballot, who has “demonstrated mentoring abilities that encourage students to seek leadership excellence in the engineering profession.” Dr. Ceki Halmen was honored at the March 21, 2013 dinner/presentation that our UMKC MSPE student chapter hosted for the MSPE WC. Speaking at the dinner was UMKC SCE’s Dr. Greg King who gave a presentation on the research he is conducting into how falls happen at the UMKC Human Balance and Ambulation Research Laboratory. LEAP award winners were featured on the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers Western Chapter (MSPE WC) webpage and their names will be added to the LEAP Award Recipient plaque housed in Flarsheim Hall. The UMKC MSPE student chapter has benefited greatly from MSPE WC’s mentorship and support and thanks them for their sponsorship of the LEAP award.
In addition to the faculty LEAP award, student LEAP awards are earned annually by the two MSPE student chapter students that write the best 300 – 1,000 word essays on engineering ethics. This year the question addressed in the student essays was based this scenario “Is it unethical to develop the evening part-time job unrelated to your full-time engineering position, and why, or how do you resolve this professional obligation issue?” This year’s student winners are Timothy Hines and Sean Rivers.
UMKC DBIA Student Chapter Visits Emery Sapp & Sons
The UMKC DBIA Student Chapter visited the office of Emery Sapp & Sons located in Kansas City, MO on March 8, 2013. After a tour of the facilities, Brian Johanning, Lowell Patterson and Tim Paulson gave a presentation on Emery Sapp & Sons business operations and industry hiring practices. The presentation included a management perspective on effective communication with clientele, expectations for future Design-Build construction projects, and tools currently used by the company for estimating and bidding. Sean Rivers if the president of the UMKC DBIA student chapter and Ceki Halmen is the UMKC DBIA faculty advisor.
18 SCE Students & 2 Faculty Tour USACE ERDC Laboratories in Vicksburg, MS
Providing SCE students educational enhancement and career development opportunities are key missions of both our UMKC Missouri Society of Professional Engineers (MSPE) and our UMKC Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) student chapters. This Spring Break they teamed up to provide their members an astonishing opportunity, a travel expense paid trip to tour the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineering Research Development Center in Vicksburg, MS on Monday, March 25 followed by a visit to the Lower Mississippi River Museum and participation at the Vicksburg SAME Post luncheon and presentation on Tuesday, March 26. Accompanying the students on the trip were civil engineering faculty Dr. Ceki Halmen and Dr. ZhiQiang Chen, MSPE Student Chapter Vice President Sean Rivers and MSPE Student Chapter staff advisor Jane Vogl. Funding was provided by the MSPE Student Chapter, the SCE Student Council, the UMKC Office of Student Involvement, the SCE Alumni Board, and the Greater Kansas City Post of the Society of American Military Engineers. Dean Kevin Truman, SAME student chapter faculty advisor, and Jane Vogl helped to arrange the trip.
The very worthwhile ERDC visit started with a warm welcome from ERDC Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory Director Dr. David Pittman. Dr. Pittman and his team provided SCE students information on careers at USACE and ERDC. He encouraged students to investigate the USACE for career possibilities as job opportunities become available. Students then visited each of the four state-of-the art laboratories open for public touring. With tremendous enthusiasm researchers at each laboratory discussed their work, how they conducted their research and shared some of their results. Because much of ERDC’s research is classified, especially the research intended to support and enable the warfighter, SCE students were left to ponder just exactly what was going on the dozens of building they did not visit within the complex. See the USACE ERDC overview fact sheet and the Media Fact Sheet about ERDC laboratories to obtain a perspective on the size and scope of ERDC’s work and mission.
Highlights of the ERDC tour included 1) viewing the 1-55 ft scale model of the McNary Lock and Dam and hearing about the research into lock and dam designs that are able to co-exist with local fish populations; 2) driving a barge in a simulated lock and dam; 3) experiencing and interacting with a simulation of driving a ship in San Francisco bay; 4) visiting the Hazardous Waste Research Center where research into removing lead from soil was described along with research into removing pollutants from sediments; 5) learning how ERDC utilizes an incredibly powerful centrifuge to conduct blast research; and 6) viewing 3-D simulations of research data and experiments in the Information Technology Laboratory.
Due to a happy coincidence, the Vicksburg Post of The Society of American Military Engineers monthly luncheon/presentation was the day after the ERDC tour. SCE students and faculty received a fantastic welcome, enjoyed a great lunch and found the presentation on weather trends extremely informative. After the luncheon, Colonel Kevin Wilson of ERDC and Colonel Jeffrey Eckstein of the USACE Vicksburg District talked with students encouraging them to excellence in their studies and their careers.
The Vicksburg trip is one of several professional trips being taken by SCE students this March and April. The UMKC National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Student Chapter members are participating in the NSBE 2013 Annual Convention in Indianapolis, IN and the UMKC IEEE Student Chapter members are participating in the IEEE Robotics Competition in Denver, CO.
SCE Students Help with Model Bridge Building Contest
January 26, 2013 marked the tenth year that SCE engineering students, Professor Ganesh Thiagajaran and Engineering Research Technician Pat O’Bannon have happily provided logistics and volunteers for the 30th Annual Model Bridge Building Competition which is organized and sponsored by the Western Chapter of the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers (MSPE). SCE engineering students Tim Hines, Bhargav Javvaji, Clark Johnson, Bhavani Ramneedi, Sean Rivers and Jerome Shin loaded and measured each of the 11 model bridge entries and carefully recorded results. Under the direction of Contest Chairperson Jim Guthrie, DE, PE, bridges were tested while their high school student builders and their teacher mentors experienced memorable demonstrations on how truss-type bridge design must include attention to individual member and global requirements, and the economics of the lightest bridge for the largest applied load.
Everyone found out the maximum load their bridge could withstand as weight was added until the bridges broke. The purpose of the testing was to determine the most efficient bridge as all were constructed per the contest rules and specifications provided by the 2013 International Bridge Building Contest. The winning bridge spanned 300 mm, weighed 22.3 grams, and supported 62.5 pounds of sand (28,349.4 grams) for an efficiency rating of 1,271.3. Cash prizes of $150, $75 and $50 will be awarded to the builder and teacher mentor of the three most efficient bridges at the 2013 Engineers Week Luncheon which is attended by hundreds of practicing engineers.
DBIA Student Team Takes First Place at Regional Competition
Our Design Build Institute of America (DBIA) student chapter pulled out all the stops, scrambling in one short week to submit a 30 page SOQ (Statement of Qualifications) for a theoretical Design-Build project entry for their region’s DBIA student competition. Despite the short timeline our UMKC team, Design-Build Performance Partners, won first place with a total of 1,906 points at the regional competition. They were awarded $1000 and free registration to attend the national competition in New Orleans on November 7th, 8th, and 9th.
The project was to design a performing arts center on a university campus in Oklahoma following various guidelines outlined in the RFQ. The guidelines included things such as an overall strategy about how we were going to go about the project, adjacency diagrams, initial cost estimate, organizational breakdown, etc. The team only had a week to complete and submit the SOQ from the time the RFQ was first issued. The design-build project delivery method is different from the traditional Design-Bid-Build delivery method and this competition was orchestrated to test the UMKC DBIA team’s knowledge and understanding of these differences.
SCE congratulates DBIA team members, Amanda “Mandy” Leipard – Civil Engineering undergrad; Joshua Boehm – Urban Planning & Design, Economics undergrad, and Erwin Quintanilla – Civil Engineering graduate student and team captain, Sean Rivers – Civil Engineering undergrad. SCE civil engineering undergrad Andrew “Andy” O’Laughlin provided additional help. Chuck Williams and Dr. Ceki Halmen are the team’s faculty advisors
Greg King 2011-2012 Faculty LEAP Award Recipient
Congratulations to Greg King, Assistant Professor in SCE’s Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department, and winner of the annual Leadership Excellence Achievement Program (LEAP) Award which was established by the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers Western Chapter (MSPE WC) in 2005. The LEAP award recognizes annually the SCE faculty, as determined by MSPE student chapter members via secret ballot, who has “demonstrated mentoring abilities that encourage students to seek leadership excellence in the engineering profession.” In addition to the faculty LEAP award, student LEAP awards are earned annually by the two MSPE student chapter students that write the best 300 – 1,000 word essays on engineering ethics. This year the question addressed in the student essays was based this scenario “Engineer A works for Company X which is owned by Engineer B. Company X is currently experiencing financial problems and Engineer B recently created another company, Company Y. Engineer A has learned that Engineer B recently advised clients of Company X to remit payments for work performed by Company X and its employees to Company Y” and the question posed was “What are Engineer A’s ethical obligations under the circumstances?” This year’s student winners are Taya Upkes and Sean Rivers.
Dr. Greg King, Taya Upkes & Sean Rivers were honored at the March 22, 2012 dinner/presentation that our UMKC MSPE student chapter hosted for the MSPE WC. Speaking at the dinner was UMKC SCE’s Dr. Larry Drbal who gave an amazing presentation on the Fukushima tragedy. In addition, the LEAP award winners were featured on the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers Western Chapter (MSPE WC) webpage and their names will be added to the LEAP Award Recipient plaque housed in Flarsheim Hall. The UMKC MSPE student chapter has benefited greatly from MSPE WC’s mentorship and support and thanks them for their sponsorship of the LEAP award.
