Lipscomb engineering students receive awards

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Lipscomb engineering students recently won awards from the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). The students competed at the ASEE Southeast Section Conference held at the University of Alabama and brought home two awards in the Student Poster Competition. There were about 20 posters in the competition from schools including Alabama, Tennessee Tech, Mississippi State, Georgia Tech, Embry-Riddle, and South Carolina. 
 
The students competed in a poster competition where they developed a poster to communicate the results of either an engineering design or an engineering research project. They had to make a brief oral presentation to the judges and also handled questions.
 
Engineering mission trip projects were the context in which both of the projects were completed. One project was a radio repeater system that provided radio communications to remote medical clinics in the mountains of Honduras. The students identified the mountain on which the radio tower should be located, designed and tested the communications system and the supporting equipment (antenna, supporting tower, power supply, etc.) and traveled to Honduras where they completed the installation. Because the repeater project was an interdisciplinary combining several different engineering disciplines, this project competed in the Interdisciplinary Engineering Design category. A team of students comprised of Kara Climer, senior in Computer Engineering, Matt Lucas, junior in Engineering Mechanics, Sheena Troyer, freshman in Engineering Mechanics and Jonathon Williams, freshman in Computer Engineering, completed this project and prepared the poster for the competition. Kara and Matt attended the conference, presented the poster and briefed the judges on their work. The team took first place in the Interdisciplinary Engineering Design category. 
 
The second project involved the development of a composting toilet system to improve sanitary conditions at a remote mountain clinic that is also used for community meetings and to house visiting groups. This project was led by Elizabeth Watts, senior in Engineering Mechanics, Heather Cochran, senior in Engineering Mechanics, and Amy Gilfilen, junior in Engineering Mechanics. They were assisted by several other engineering students who worked very hard on this labor-intensive project. Elizabeth, Heather, and Amy developed the poster and competed in the Engineering and Engineering Technology Design category. They took second place in their category.