Category: Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

The Michigan Tech Steel Bridge Team qualified for the national AISC 2024 National Steel Bridge Competition, continuing their legacy of participating in this time-honored, annual competition. 

The competition first began 37 years ago with undergraduate engineering students from just three schools—Lawrence Tech, Michigan Tech, and Wayne State—competing in a parking lot at Lawrence Tech.

This year, hosted by Louisiana Tech University, no less than 47 schools from all over the U.S., Canada, and Mexico traveled to Ruston, Louisiana for the competition. Teams were asked to design and build a steel bridge for a disc golf course located in nearby Lincoln Parish Park. The bridge needed to be able to accommodate players, park employees, and maintenance vehicles. The river the bridge would span was man-made, but for an added cost, teams could install and use temporary barges to facilitate the construction of their bridge. 

As elements of the competition, the bridges are judged in categories, such as construction speed, lightness, aesthetics, stiffness, cost, economy, and efficiency. MTU’s team finished 9th overall and placed 8th in stiffness and 5th in efficiency. 

“It’s a great opportunity for students to learn to work with each other on a complex project,” says civil engineering student Jon Wright, MTU Steel Bridge Team captain. 

“The goal is to design a structure where strength, weight, and cost are all balanced to provide the best outcome. It isn’t enough to simply design a bridge that can support the load placed on it at competition. It must be able to support the load with minimal deflection and with minimal weight while being easy to assemble,” Wright explains. “Anyone can design a bridge that stands. But it takes an engineer to design a bridge that ‘barely’ stands.”

“The MTU team’s independence and initiative are always impressive to me,” adds faculty advisor, Andrew Swartz, associate professor of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering. “They excel in all the types of activities you would expect in a competition like this—design, detailing, fabrication, and construction sequencing. But the team excels at things you may not necessarily think of, as well—like fundraising, recruitment, training, and documentation for future years. The students are the driving force behind the entire enterprise,” Swartz says. “I learn a lot when I travel with them.”

The MTU Steel Bridge Team consistently qualifies for nationals, and typically places in among the top 10 finishers. During COVID, the team even scored a top 5 finish, notes Swartz. “The MTU legacy of educating and producing high-quality engineers is still going strong.”

Environmental engineering students from Michigan Tech traveled to New Mexico State University to compete in the 34th annual WERC Environmental Design Contest—and took home numerous awards, $4,000 in prize money, plus the opportunity to be published in IEEE Xplore.

All are members of Michigan Tech’s Built World Enterprise (BWE), part of Michigan Tech’s award-winning Enterprise Program.

For Francine Rosinski, it was her third year in a row competing at WERC, with a different sort of project each time. This year, tasked with creating a stormwater management plan for a disadvantaged community, Rosinski and six other students, Jenna Cook, Allison Olson, Isabel Smith, Nadia Stauffer, Eden Traub, and Andrew Wozniak, created a system of bioretention cells and bioswales employing natural clays and biochar to remove chloride pollution from road salts. Their client? The small, snowy community of Dollar Bay, Michigan, that has been experiencing flooding issues for years. 

The WERC Environmental Design Contest was established in 1991 as one facet of a Waste-management Research Consortium (WERC), formed by the U.S. Department of Energy, Sandia National Labs, New Mexico State University, University of New Mexico, and Dine College.

The contest expanded and has continued on for 35 years, inviting undergraduate engineering students from across the country to design solutions for conserving and recycling water, energy, natural resources, and waste. 

Each year industry and government agencies propose and sponsor real-world tasks for the contest. The tasks are open-ended, giving teams room for innovation and creativity. 

A total of 18 teams competed for prizes this year, including students from Michigan Tech, California Polytechnic State University, Louisiana State University, New Mexico State University, Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, University of Mississippi, University of Arkansas, University of Idaho, Washington State University, and Washington University. Some universities sent more than one team to take part in the contest. 

Michigan Tech sent two teams. MTU’s WERC 1 team earned 1st place overall for its green infrastructure stormwater management design, 2nd place for its bench scale demonstration, and received an honorable mention for its business flash talk, basically a quick, 3-minute business pitch. The students dedicated a full academic year to the creation of their green infrastructure stormwater management system for Dollar Bay.

Michigan Tech’s second team, WERC 4, was comprised of all first-year students. The team earned the WERC Judges’ Choice Award for its algal CO2 removal system. 

“My favorite part of this project was connecting with the community–spending time attending town hall meetings, meeting with local engineers, and interviewing countless residents on their struggles dealing with ongoing flooding in the town,” said team member Nadia Stauffer, who will graduate this December.

“The competition also gave us time to watch the solar eclipse,” says Roskinski. She graduated in April and recently began work as a water resources engineer in Grand Rapids.

“As an engineer, you will have to work not only with other engineers but also with the community and many other people,” adds Rosinski. “This is what I think sets us apart from other teams in the WERC competition because we addressed specific needs in the community.” 

Figuring out how to make an innovative stormwater plan was especially challenging, adds Rosinski. “The competition asked for a nature-based design. There are only so many ways to divert runoff using vegetation or natural materials. We chose to remove a specific pollutant, salinity from road salt and found natural materials that could remove it. This also gave us a competitive edge.”

Besides connecting with the community, participation in WERC provides students with the opportunity to present their findings to knowledgeable professional engineers. “WERC judges offer a great deal of support,” notes Rosinski. “We have received compliments from engineers who said our design was innovative. One judge who has served in the competition for over 30 years told us our poster was one of the best he had seen. Another judge said our writing was great. These opportunities for in-person feedback and professional connections are phenomenal and one-of-a-kind.”

At Michigan Tech, Audra Morse, faculty advisor of Built World Enterprise, encourages undergraduate students of all majors to compete in design competitions and solve problems that relate to civil and environmental engineering. BWE also partners with Engineers Without Borders to provide opportunities for students to collaborate all over the world.

“At Michigan Tech classes are hard, but they push you to be better and to grow, and most importantly, to think critically,” notes Rosinski. “Taking part in Enterprise and BWE enabled me to use the knowledge gained in my classes. I could apply it to real situations while using critical thinking. At the same time, I was also gaining soft skills—public speaking, leadership, and teamwork.”

Rosinski first joined BWE as a second-year student. “Back then I didn’t think I had the knowledge or skills to compete against seniors at other universities for the WERC competition,” she says. “I will never forget being with my team and hearing them call our name for first place for our bench-scale model, then second place for our task. All of a sudden I realized I really could be an engineer, that I do have what it takes to be successful.”

When Rosinski first joined the Built World Enterprise, it was new on campus and smaller with around 15-20 members. BWE has since doubled in size, with over 40 members. Rosinski spent her senior year serving as BWE president. 

“Leadership roles are about mentoring and pushing your team to be better, and I strived for that,” she says. “I am so proud, and now I am eagerly waiting to see what BWE does in the future!”