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Civil engineering majors are determined to return to the National Student Steel Bridge Competition and improve on last year’s standing among top schools in North America. Sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and American Society of Civil Engineers, the annual event is the largest and most prestigious civil engineering competition in the country.

Led by Lauren Adinolfi ’06 (Hopewell Junction, N.Y.), Brian Jennings ’06 (Old Bridge, N.J.), Debra Gilkerson ’06 (Albany, Calif.), Lee Vanzler ’07 (Sharon, Mass.), and Eric Backlund ’07 (Parlin, N.J.), students are gearing up for this year’s test in Salt Lake City, Utah. Last year a Lafayette contingent advanced through the regionals to the national competition, held in Orlando, Fla., for the first time.

Within a limited time, contestants must construct a low-cost steel bridge able to support 2,500 pounds of vertical weight that deflects little under load. Aesthetics, construction speed, lightness, stiffness, construction economy, and structural efficiency are considered in judging.

Jennings and Adinolfi, like all of the team’s seniors, are veterans of steel bridge competition and agree it is an excellent experience.

“It’s great to take what I learn in the classroom and apply it to something real,” says Jennings.

Adinolfi adds, “The competitions are also great for meeting new people and seeing their solutions to different engineering problems.”

Adinolfi, Jennings, and Gilkerson are earning academic credit for their work on the project (as an independent study), but the rest of the team is doing it just for the experience.

“Steel bridge has been one of my favorite extracurricular activities since the beginning of my freshman year. I feel strongly that the competition is one of the best ways to enhance the civil engineering education at Lafayette,” Vanzler says. “The competition fosters teamwork, leadership, and an engineering thought process not commonly found in a classroom setting. Unlike scheduled classroom labs, steel bridge takes you through all elements of an engineering project. From dreaming up a design, to fabrication, to construction, testing, and achievement, it is one awesome experience.”

In addition to joining the ambitious AISC team, juniors like Lee and Backlund also participated in a separate steel bridge competition against classmates in the course Fundamentals of Structural Engineering taught bySteve Kurtz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. In the intraclass competition, students design and fabricate bridges according to the rules of the national competition, keeping their techniques secret during the eight weeks leading up to the assembly and testing. This semester’s competition was held Friday in Acopian Engineering Center room 117.

Each year AISC changes the rules of the national competition dramatically to ensure that no one can win with a previous model. The changes make for a new challenge each year, Kurtz says. “Some other competitions get old, but in the 15 years of the AISC competition, they have been able to keep the challenge fresh, and that fosters creativity.”

Students spend long hours in the lab with Kurtz, who checks their models and shows them how to conduct shop work. It adds up to a close-knit, hands-on learning experience, and the students benefit in a number of ways.

“Because it’s what engineers do, we produce physical outcomes in the projects,” Kurtz says. “One thing they get is that it’s more exciting than other homework they receive and another is that it makes students work harder because the excitement of it. They get a greater level of work, but they put it all together; it gives relevance to otherwise irrelevant things.”

Co-sponsors of the Student Steel Bridge Competition include the American Iron and Steel Institute, James F. Lincoln Arch Welding Foundation, National Steel Bridge Alliance, Nucor Corporation, and Walter P. Moore and Associates.

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Students in the Fundamentals of Structural Engineering course of Steve Kurtz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, prepare their entry in the National Steel Bridge Competition.

Categorized in: Academic News