MechSE students pose with the Spirit of Illini Engineering trophy.MechSE shined at Engineering Open House 2012. For its efforts, the department earned the Spirit of Illini Engineering award. MechSE students and faculty gathered the following week in the John Deere Pavilion at the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory to celebrate this and other awards with dinner and a ceremony.
Written by By Chad Garland
MechSE students pose with the Spirit of Illini Engineering trophy.
MechSE shined at Engineering Open House 2012. For its efforts, the department earned the Spirit of Illini Engineering award. MechSE students and faculty gathered the following week in the John Deere Pavilion at the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory to celebrate this and other awards with dinner and a ceremony.
“I’m completely confident that this award is the most deserved award,” MechSE department head Placid Ferreira said. “There was lots of spirit out there.”
While the department as a whole displayed the most spirit, individual exhibits earned awards, as well. Pi Tau Sigma’s (PTS) sand casting exhibit earned first place honors in the “Encore Non-Technical” category and the mechanical engineering honor society also earned a third place prize in “Encore Technical” for its PTS Grillz exhibit, which featured a gas grill that had been redesigned and improved to fix a structural failure. PTS sold food cooked on the grill and donated the proceeds, more than $700, to Relay for Life.
The Illini EcoConcept Team placed third for their exhibit on fuel cell technology in the category “Dream. Design. Discover.” this year’s EOH theme. The team used hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity that powered small vehicles to show visitors how fuel cells work.
Director of Undergraduate Programs Emad Jassim and Interim Associate Head for Undergraduate Programs Michael Philpott also recognized MechSE student societies with department awards for their displays. The award for Best MechSE EOH displays went to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for multiple displays. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) won second place and the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) tied with PTS for third place. PTS also won a prize for best documentation of MechSE EOH for a video that PTS historian Nick Froggat and president Christopher Delaney produced.
“The MechSE department is very proud of our students’ efforts and ingenuity put forth in this year’s EOH,” Jassim said. “We are also grateful to the MechSE staff and faculty who helped provide support for the student projects. “