A couple of the high school students hover around the 2007 world-champion formula car, and their interest in the vehicle is reminiscent of Mantovano’s high school days. The Chicago, Illinois, native spent a lot of time in his school auto shop and even started a high-mileage vehicle club to design and build a fuel-efficient car.
“I really wanted to continue that type of extracurricular activity in college, so that’s how I started looking at different universities,” Mantovano says.

During Mantovano’s senior year in high school, the UW-Madison Formula SAE team ranked third in the world, and Mantovano was impressed. After touring the auto shop and meeting some of the students, he thought UW-Madison was the place for him.

As a freshman, Mantovano joined the Formula SAE team; student members design, build and race a formula-style car for a collegiate competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
In May 2007, Mantovano’s sophomore year, the team traveled to Romeo, Michigan, and claimed the world championship for the first time in UW-Madison history. Afterward, team membership skyrocketed to more than 100 students, and Mantovano, who had been the group leader’s “right-hand man,” found himself mentoring newer members.
 During the 2007-2008 school year, Mantovano was the powertrain group leader. He says the team has evolved substantially since his freshman year: Team leaders are more focused on training new members, and Mantovano says their self-sufficiency lets him focus on designing the powertrain system and testing engine parts.

Team dedication is evident in the amount of time members spend in the shop. “It’s like a job,” Mantovano says.

In the fall semester, he works on the car 20 hours a week; the time commitment jumps to almost 50 hours a week in the spring months before competition. “People don’t understand how I do it. I work twice a week, take four or five classes, and I’m at the gym right when it opens—I’m always running around,” says Mantovano with a laugh. “It’s worth it—it definitely pays off,” he adds. “You get what you put into the team. The more time you put in, the more you get out of it.”
Mantovano credits his family for the discipline it takes to balance all of his responsibilities. Both of his parents are originally from Italy, and Mantovano speaks fluent Italian. “They grew up pretty disciplined themselves, and some of that rubbed off on me,” he says.

His family is also the source of his passion for all things automotive. “When I was 5 years old, we used to go to Florida to visit my uncle. He’d have a few Ferrari model cars running around, so I’d play with them and take them apart, but try not to crash them because they’re kind of expensive,” Mantovano says.
His father, an avionics technician who originally aspired to be an engineer, taught Mantovano how to be hands-on around the house and in the garage. The result, Mantovano says, is that he’s a “fixer.”
His experience has led to several internships. In summer 2007, he worked at Goodyear in Akron, Ohio, on massive off-road tires that stand 12 feet tall. This summer, he’ll move to Iowa to work for John Deere on powertrains and engine control. In the fall, he’ll switch tracks and work on jet engine turbines for GE Aviation.

In the future, Mantovano says he would like to own his own company. He’s earning a business certificate at UW-Madison with that goal in mind. “If I could work for Ferrari, that’d be my dream job,” he adds.
In addition to his vehicle experiences, Mantovano has helped Assistant Dean for Engineering General Resources Don Woolston give presentations to prospective engineering students. After the presentations, Mantovano leads the students and their families on a tour of the engineering campus.
“I show them the shop as the last part because a lot of students want to see the hands-on stuff, and the shop is an easy way to give them a good representation of what students can get involved in here,” he says.

Involvement, in the end, is what Mantovano stresses to prospective students. “When you come to college, no matter what you do, get involved. Do something you love,” he says. “If it weren’t for my involvement in the organizations I’m in, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.”

The students waved back across the tribal office parking lot and headed inside to discuss the details of their first long-term domestic project. Until now, the UW-Madison EWB chapter has focused on international projects in Rwanda, El Salvador, Haiti and Kenya.

EWB is a nonprofit organization that designs and implements sustainable engineering projects for communities, the vast majority of which are in foreign countries.

“Working closely with a Wisconsin community is as important as working in an exotic foreign location,” says civil and environmental engineering graduate student Alison Sanders, who is the project co-manager with civil and environmental engineering undergraduate Matthew McLaughlin. “We’re also getting a valuable experience in learning federal engineering design codes as well as learning the reservation’s own laws.”

Sanders and McLaughlin, along with mechanical engineering undergraduate Gavin Weir, civil and environmental engineering graduate student David Blodgett and civil and environmental engineering professor Kenneth Potter, met with Funk and tribal members from Aug. 1-4 to begin three projects related to flooding and stormwater infrastructure. The projects are long term, since EWB requires its chapters to commit to a community for at least five years.

The Red Cliff reservation wraps around 14 miles of the northernmost peninsula of mainland Wisconsin. The shoreline has a view of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the clear waters of Lake Superior, known as “Anishanaabeg-gichigami” in the Ojibwe language (Chippewa is the anglicized term for Ojibwe).

Unfortunately, the scenic setting has not translated into economic prosperity for Red Cliff residents. The modest homes and community buildings on the reservation, which is home to approximately 1,500 people, stand in contrast with those in nearby Bayfield, Wis.

“Many Native American communities were decades behind comparably sized non-Indian communities in terms of basic water and sewer infrastructure,” says Funk. “Generally, quality of life in some parts of the reservation is not as good as it could be, and we hope EWB can help the tribe develop creative, low-cost solutions.”

One task for UW-Madison EWB will be to find a practical way to prevent flooding in a new community cemetery, which is located downhill of a wetland. Dry land suitable for development is often scarce on reservations in northern Wisconsin, and the tribe has discussed options for years. EWB members will evaluate the current plans to redirect water away from the site and try to turn those plans into a practical solution.

The students spent a hot and sunny afternoon surveying the cemetery with surveying equipment borrowed from the civil and environmental engineering department. They also toured a subdivision plagued by seasonal flooding and the future site of another housing project that currently consists of a bumpy dirt road cutting through a thick patch of forest. Funk hopes the students can design a stormwater management system for the new development, and the students plan to return in the fall to survey the site after the leaves have fallen.

Connecting with the community was also a trip priority. Students spoke with a tribal elder, who explained the tribe’s history and the relationship between the Ojibwe Tribes and the United States. Sanders and Blodgett met with the tribal council on the final evening of the trip and were featured on the local television station.

“We are really excited to be working with the Red Cliff Tribe,” says Sanders. “Not only is it a great learning experience for student engineers to apply their knowledge to real-world problems, but this collaboration provides a unique personal experience and cultural awareness.”

Red Cliff is not the only tribal community that will benefit from UW-Madison EWB efforts by. Throughout the spring, Sanders and McLaughlin were in touch with multiple Lake Superior Chippewa communities. They selected Red Cliff as the UW-Madison project, but they didn’t neglect the others: Sanders and McLaughlin coordinated with the EWB chapters at UW-Platteville and Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, which will work with Lac Vieux Desert. Michigan Technological Institute will pick up projects with Keweenaw Bay.

“I’m very appreciate of the effort and attitude of the group,” Funk says. “Beyond the practical help, I’m looking forward to the energy, enthusiasm and inspiration of the UW-Madison EWB chapter.”

Civil and environmental engineering students Jonathan Blanchard , Kevin Orner and David Tengler receive a plaque from five communities in Ecuador that will benefit from a new water pipeline the students implemented in June. (large image)

“I’ve got a project for you,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Peter Bosscher told Jonathan Blanchard and Kevin Orner in August 2007, during one of the trio’s weekly gatherings at Bosscher’s home.

Blanchard and Orner, civil and environmental engineering students who graduated in May 2008, listened as their mentor described a design to fix a water pipeline serving five small communities in central Ecuador.

“The day he told us, we said, ‘Yes, we’ll do it.’ We went home and started putting together a proposal that week,” says Orner.

Along with fellow civil and environmental engineering student David Tengler, Blanchard and Orner tackled the project for their senior design capstone project, a requirement for all civil and environmental engineering seniors.

The result is a 10 km-long system of PVC pipes that provides equal amounts of water to the villages of Larca Cunga, Agualongo, Panecillo, Yambiro and San Juan Loma.

Water equity is a major improvement: Before the project, the communities furthest from the mountain spring could only draw water for one hour late at night while the communities closest to the source drew an estimated 100 gallons per person per day.

“We all felt privileged to do a project that influences people’s lives in such a positive way,” says Tengler.

Implemented in Ecuador in June 2008, the project is also a meaningful tribute to a mentor who lived to serve others. Bosscher died in November 2007 after a battle with kidney cancer.

“We’ve been so tremendously influenced by Peter and we want to keep remembering what he’s taught us,” says Blanchard. “The pipeline, which has been dubbed the Peter Bosscher Memorial Waterway, is a living memorial because it will keep providing abundant water for years to come.”

The idea for the pipeline redesign originally came from researchers at the UW-Madison Center for Global Health, who noticed local struggles with water access while conducting a field study in Ecuador. Sensing that an engineering solution was necessary, Curtis Johnson, a professor emeritus of pharmacy and medicine, invited Bosscher to survey the system. Lori DiPrete Brown, the Center for Global Health assistant director, worked with Bosscher in the field and stayed connected with the community. She also oriented the students.

Bosscher was the advisor for the UW-Madison chapter of Engineers Without Borders, a nonprofit organization that designs and implements sustainable engineering projects in foreign countries. Blanchard, Orner and Tengler were active members of EWB—Blanchard and Orner even led a project to construct a sewer pipeline in El Salvador in January 2008.

Their EWB connections also led them to Tom Siebers, a civil and environmental alumnus and retired engineer who acted as a resource and mentor for the students.

“I enjoyed it tremendously,” says Siebers. “You can purchase a vacation to another country, but you only see it from a distance. This enabled us to live and work with people who could touch you and be touched by you.”

Other alumni and industry contacts were involved with the project by way of funding. The Civil and Environmental Visiting Committee financed the project, which cost $12,500.

“The board saw a legitimate need and saw the passion of the students,” says Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor and Chair Jeffrey Russell. “When our alumni and industry partners are asked to help, they respond, especially when you articulate how your plan is going to make a difference.”

In March 2008, Orner and Tengler traveled to Ecuador during their spring break to meet community members and gather field data. After tweaking the design for the rest of the semester, the three students and Siebers returned to Ecuador to implement the project from May 27 to June 10.

Prior to the group’s arrival, the communities gathered to excavate the pipeline trenches. The Ecuadorian tradition of gathering together to work for the good of the community is known as a minga.

“There were women with year-old babies on their back willing to climb a kilometer uphill in bare feet to lay pipe,” recalls Orner. “That was just business as usual.”

The project had three components. First, new pipe with a wider diameter than that of the existing pipe was laid to increase the flow to the system. Next, the team added a pressure release box to prevent pipes from bursting at the low end of the system. Additionally, they installed water meters and valves to regulate the system.

Though the students originally thought two minga sessions would be enough to complete the project, they ended up working every day for the two-week trip. On the final day, the communities threw a celebration to thank the students for their work. The festivities included speeches, dancing and a basket of potatoes served with five roasted guinea pigs on top.

The communities also gave the students a plaque, which will hang in the civil and environmental engineering department office—a small reminder of the project its legacy.

“Peter’s view of the role of an engineering education is it can and should be relevant and significant in a global world. He thought about big challenges and how he could make a difference,” says Russell.

Tengler now works for Hunzinger Construction Co. in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Blanchard and Orner will continue a career in humanitarian-based engineering as graduate students in the Peace Corps Master’s International program at the University of South Florida, Tampa.

“It’s one thing to talk about globalization and making a difference. It’s another thing entirely to do it,” says Russell.

For Tengler, the experience illustrated the power of an engineering education to help people.

“If other students have this kind of opportunity, it would create a whole new class of civil engineers,” he says. “You don’t realize the potential of your education until you actually start doing things.”

In May 2007, the UW-Madison Formula SAE Racing Team battled 129 schools from 11 countries and won the prestigious SAE Foundation Cup, pictured with team member Gianluca Mantovano. (large image)

Gianluca Mantovano’s favorite part of the tours he gives prospective students is what he calls the “grand finale.” It’s a look at the Myers Student Automotive Center in the Engineering Centers Building—home to the six University of Wisconsin-Madison vehicle teams and a major part of Mantovano’s daily life.

“This is the team I’m on,” the mechanical engineering student tells nine high school students and their families, gesturing at the Formula SAE car engine Mantovano tests.

A couple of the high school students hover around the 2007 world-champion formula car, and their interest in the vehicle is reminiscent of Mantovano’s high school days. The Chicago, Illinois, native spent a lot of time in his school auto shop and even started a high-mileage vehicle club to design and build a fuel-efficient car.

“I really wanted to continue that type of extracurricular activity in college, so that’s how I started looking at different universities,” Mantovano says.

During Mantovano’s senior year in high school, the UW-Madison Formula SAE team ranked third in the world, and Mantovano was impressed. After touring the auto shop and meeting some of the students, he thought UW-Madison was the place for him.

As a freshman, Mantovano joined the Formula SAE team; student members design, build and race a formula-style car for a collegiate competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

In May 2007, Mantovano’s sophomore year, the team traveled to Romeo, Michigan, and claimed the world championship for the first time in UW-Madison history. Afterward, team membership skyrocketed to more than 100 students, and Mantovano, who had been the group leader’s “right-hand man,” found himself mentoring newer members.
 During the 2007-2008 school year, Mantovano was the powertrain group leader. He says the team has evolved substantially since his freshman year: Team leaders are more focused on training new members, and Mantovano says their self-sufficiency lets him focus on designing the powertrain system and testing engine parts.

Team dedication is evident in the amount of time members spend in the shop. “It’s like a job,” Mantovano says.

Gianluca Mantovano’s passion for race cars led to a scholarship from Castrol, which he traveled to California to receive. While there, he toured drag racer John Force’s garage and poses here with a drag car engine. (large image)

In the fall semester, he works on the car 20 hours a week; the time commitment jumps to almost 50 hours a week in the spring months before competition. “People don’t understand how I do it. I work twice a week, take four or five classes, and I’m at the gym right when it opens—I’m always running around,” says Mantovano with a laugh. “It’s worth it—it definitely pays off,” he adds. “You get what you put into the team. The more time you put in, the more you get out of it.”

Mantovano credits his family for the discipline it takes to balance all of his responsibilities. Both of his parents are originally from Italy, and Mantovano speaks fluent Italian. “They grew up pretty disciplined themselves, and some of that rubbed off on me,” he says.

His family is also the source of his passion for all things automotive. “When I was 5 years old, we used to go to Florida to visit my uncle. He’d have a few Ferrari model cars running around, so I’d play with them and take them apart, but try not to crash them because they’re kind of expensive,” Mantovano says.

His father, an avionics technician who originally aspired to be an engineer, taught Mantovano how to be hands-on around the house and in the garage. The result, Mantovano says, is that he’s a “fixer.”

His experience has led to several internships. In summer 2007, he worked at Goodyear in Akron, Ohio, on massive off-road tires that stand 12 feet tall. This summer, he’ll move to Iowa to work for John Deere on powertrains and engine control. In the fall, he’ll switch tracks and work on jet engine turbines for GE Aviation.

In the future, Mantovano says he would like to own his own company. He’s earning a business certificate at UW-Madison with that goal in mind. “If I could work for Ferrari, that’d be my dream job,” he adds.

In addition to his vehicle experiences, Mantovano has helped Assistant Dean for Engineering General Resources Don Woolston give presentations to prospective engineering students. After the presentations, Mantovano leads the students and their families on a tour of the engineering campus.

“I show them the shop as the last part because a lot of students want to see the hands-on stuff, and the shop is an easy way to give them a good representation of what students can get involved in here,” he says.

Involvement, in the end, is what Mantovano stresses to prospective students. “When you come to college, no matter what you do, get involved. Do something you love,” he says. “If it weren’t for my involvement in the organizations I’m in, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.”

Seven students from the UW-Madison ZeroG team spent a week in April at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The team participated in the annual NASA Reduced Gravity Student Program, which allows students to propose, design and test an experiment of their choice in varying gravity conditions.

The results from the UW-Madison experiment show a particular spray cooling method is not dependent on gravity—a significant finding that means spray cooling could be used in airplane and other high-heat electronics.

The experiment was based on the work of team adviser Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Timothy Shedd.

Circuits on a computer chip have temperature-dependent performances—when chips get too hot, they slow down. Air-cooling methods, which use fans to blow air across the chips, are not ideal for supercomputers or large server banks, such as the racks of computers that support Yahoo or many financial institutions.

Shedd and his team have developed a system that sprays dielectric liquid in a linear array directly onto the chips. The liquid won’t damage the electronics, and the direct contact maximizes the amount of heat transferred from the chip to the liquid.

Traditional spray cooling methods direct the liquid upward, relying on gravity to drain the liquid away. However, this method won’t work in laptops since users move the computer in many directions. The method also won’t work in airplanes or spacecraft, which go through varying gravity conditions.

“To be reliable, spray cooling has to not be gravity dependent,” Shedd says.

Shedd thought his linear spray array could be the answer, but testing was difficult.

That’s where ZeroG came in.

The team spent the winter designing and building the experiment, resulting in a12-cubic- square-foot Plexiglas box capable of videotaping the spray and measuring how well it cools electronics.

The team was in Houston from April 17 through 25 and allowed two flights on the “Weightless Wonder,” a C-9 aircraft that flies in a parabola. The plane creates a 30- second period of weightlessness at its peak and a 60 second period of double gravity when it dips and ascends again to the next peak.

The transition between the double gravity and zero gravity periods is difficult for some passengers—the team was kindly forewarned that a third of passengers are fine on the flight, another third get sick and the final third get violently sick without anti-nausea medication.

However, the five UW-Madison students who flew were more than fine. “When you get to the point of realizing, man, we’re really doing this, it blows your mind,” says engineering mechanics undergraduate John Springmann. The plane makes multiple passes over the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to the spray cooling experiment, the students tested what their bodies could do in zero gravity as the plane went up and down.

Engineering students Lisa McGill (front) and Jessica Rybicki, along with physics student Adam Beardsley, work on their experiment in zero-gravity onboard NASA’s Weightless Wonder. (large image)

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Physics and mathematics student Adam Beardsley wandered around on the ceiling. Since blood doesn’t rush to the brain while upside down in zero gravity, he felt normal—the others looked like they were the ones upside down.

When the plane landed, the trip wasn’t over. The students toured historic mission control, sitting in the chairs that belonged to scientists from the original Apollo missions in the 1960s. They walked through a life-size mock-up of the International Space Station and watched as astronauts trained in giant swimming pools.

Back in Wisconsin, the students still have plenty of work to do. Team members will try publishing their research and will speak to a variety of groups ranging from elementary classrooms to the Wisconsin Space Conference in August.

Two team members are active with NASA this summer. Springmann is participating in the NASA Academy, a residential internship program in Greenbelt, Maryland that allows students to conduct laboratory research.

Lisa McGill, an engineering mechanics and astronautics undergraduate, is working on web technology at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California as part of the Education Associates Program.

For Shedd, the ZeroGteam provided valuable data. The team found that linear spray cooling is effective in both zero gravity and double gravity conditions.

“I thought they did a nice job—this experiment is hard enough to do on the ground, much less in a container they’ve shipped to Houston and put on a plane,” he says.

—Sandra Knisely

(For photos and a video of the students, visit the UW-Madison College of Engineering homepage or check out the students’ website here.

Within a decade, NASA plans to begin building a permanent lunar colony to serve as an outpost en route to Mars.

So, the lunar dust needs to be cleared—and one University of Wisconsin-Madison mechanical engineering student is helping to develop the robotic equipment needed for the task.

Mechanical engineering student Joshua Figuered works on part of the latest NASA lunar rover project. (large image)

Josh Figuered is a NASA co-op, working for the robotics systems technology branch of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

“It’s something I’ve always been super interested in,” he says of NASA. “As a co-op it’s amazing because they really try to put you through all the processes of engineering. It’s a cool opportunity.”

Figuered is no stranger to the design and manufacturing processes. Originally from a farm in Bloomington, Indiana, Figuered spent his high school years working as late as 3 a.m. on cars and bikes for the school solar racing team. The hard work paid off, rewarding Figuered and his teammates with multiple trips to Japan to claim world championship victories.

When he started college at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, Figuered continued working for the institute Baja team.

However, he soon focused his skills on vehicles of a different sort. As a sophomore, he began working for NASA as a co-op student in spring 2006. He transferred to UW-Madison in time for the spring 2007 semester.

After spending a semester adjusting to UW-Madison, Figuered followed his pattern of alternating his semesters between school and work. He again piled his belongings into his car and moved back to Houston. “It was January the first time I went down. I left my house and it was 14 degrees,” Figuered recalls. “I drove down there, got out of the car and it was 70 degrees. That’s a perk.”

Figuered test drives Chariot, a new prototype for future lunar trucks. (large image)

A bigger perk is the chance to work on a new major project each year. In 2007 he designed the transmission for the Chariot lunar rover, a prototype that includes several advanced vehicle concepts and is the first step in a new era of lunar rovers. Chariot was designed, manufactured, assembled and tested in 11 months—an intense pace, Figuered says.

“What we’ve done with Chariot is design a concept in advanced mobility,” says Figuered.

In 2008, the robotics branch will tackle another rover, which will build on some of the elements developed for Chariot.

Figuered sees his work at NASA as beneficial to earthlings as much as to astronauts.

“The technologies that were developed in order to get to the moon originally really benefited mankind in a variety of ways,” he says. “To set up a sustained colony, you face a lot of huge problems that have solutions that can really be used to benefit people.”

Many of his co-workers, who come from a variety of engineering and non-engineering backgrounds, also are college students on co-op. (NASA takes approximately 50 co-ops per semester.)

“It’s almost like a college campus in a way,” he says of the NASA facilities and co-op culture. “It’s similar except you don’t have homework and you’re paid to be there!”

As 255 Madison students and community members thundered down the Lakeshore Path on the first warm Saturday morning in April, they dodged muddy puddles and happy pedestrians out for a weekend walk along Lake Mendota.

The runners’ motivation? A worthy cause, and several hundred slices of pie waiting at the finish line.

April 5, 2008, was the 8th annual Pi Mile Run, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. This year boasted double the attendance of last year’s event, with participants running in either a 5K (3.14 miles) or 10K race.

All race proceeds go toward a clean water project in El Salvador.

Mechanical engineering student Ted Durkee, who coordinated the 2007 run, connected the honor society with the El Salvador project. Two summers ago, Durkee traveled to El Salvador to work with ENLACE, a non-profit organization that develops sustainable initiatives in El Salvador.

Currently, families in the communities of Las Delicias, Las Animas and El Rosario spend a third of their meager income trucking in water—yet, the water comes from one of the most polluted rivers in El Salvador.

During his stay in El Salvador, Durkee learned that community residents have been trying to get clean water for more than 50 years. The three communities, which combined have a population of 6,100, now are working together on their attempts to build a well water system. They finally developed formal plans in 2002.

Although the communities have the will to implement the project and ENLACE provides organizational support, they lack the finances to get the wells and pipes in place.

Biomedical engineering student Jessica Hause organized the 2008 Pi Mile Run, with help from Durkee and biomedical engineering student Sarah Steenblock. As in 2007, they again chose the Las Delicias water project as the charity to benefit from race sponsors and registration fees. “We volunteered for this because we were really excited about the opportunity to organize a community event and help fulfill a need that will directly change people’s lives,” Durkee says.

The strong turnout means Tau Beta Pi will donate about $4,000—an amount that will make a significant difference. Every $20 equals 8 feet of pipe for the well system, according to Hause.

A variety of sponsors, including URS Washington Division; Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates Inc.; Polygon Engineering Council; Saris Cycling Group; Rudolph & Sletten Inc; Underground Printing; Fontana Sports; Montgomery Associates; and Hey and Associates Inc., also helped make the Pi Mile Run a success, says Durkee.

“We were really excited and pleasantly surprised by the generosity of our sponsors this year. That definitely had a tremendous effect on the event and enabled us to make a much bigger impact on our chosen charity,” he says.

The event drew participants at a variety of running levels. Sam Keepman, a UW-Madison sophomore, was the top male winner of the 5K at a time of 18:05. A member of the UW-Madison track team, Keepman says he participated in the race because it benefited charity and was conveniently located. “It’s my first time running this race,” he says. “I didn’t think it would be this big.”

Two other race participants were also first-time Pi Mile runners. Jessica, age 8, and Jocelyn, age 5, traveled from Fredonia, Wisconsin, to tackle the 5K along with their mother, who frequently runs races. “This is the first race they’ve run without strollers,” she says.

Jessica was all smiles about her successful day. Jocelyn was a bit tired.

Kae Yoshikawa was the top 5K female runner with a time of 22:43. Chris Dresser was the top 10K male runner at 34:28 and Jaime Kulbel was the top 10K female at 44:57.

However, current technology can give residents only a few tens of seconds of warning that an earthquake is about to strike.

More than 6,000 miles away from Tokyo, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering students are discussing technologies for better prediction systems—and how engineers from different disciplines could collaborate to find a solution.

The Tokyo case study is only one example of the humanitarian applications of engineering that students are investigating in the inaugural semester of the course, Introduction to Society’s Engineering Grand Challenges.

Based on challenges outlined by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the UW-Madison class aims to inspire students to become engineers to improve the quality of life around the world. This semester, 98 first-year students are tackling five themes that encompass a variety of challenges facing society today.

Susan C. Hagness

Donald C. Woolston

Susan Hagness, a professor in electrical and computer engineering, conceived of the course as a way to show students the bigger picture of what engineers do for society. “The course is a combination of the NAE project and an inclination I’ve had for awhile that there are students out there who would make wonderful engineers who need to know more about the important impact engineering has in the world,” says Hagness. “It’s not about making cool high-tech gadgets. It’s more than that.”

The course reaches out to students early in their engineering education because studies suggest that students who see the role of engineering in society are more likely to stay with the field, Hagness says.

Mike Lucas is one of the first-year students in Grand Challenges. Lucas says he entered UW-Madison confident he would be an engineer, but partway through the first semester of classes, he was unsure he wanted to continue. “I was just not exposed to much engineering,” he says.

His adviser, College of Engineering Assistant Dean for Engineering General Resources Donald Woolston, encouraged Lucas to try the Grand Challenges course.

The class helped. “It gives you a good idea of what engineers do and the specifics of what the different disciplines do,” Lucas says. He says studying engineering now feels like a concrete decision and plans to pursue a degree in engineering mechanics.

The course also makes an effort to reach out to women—and nearly a quarter of the enrolled students are female. Samantha Kamin is one of them. A first-year student, Kamin was interested in engineering before taking the course, but Grand Challenges helped her pinpoint biomedical engineering as the discipline she plans to study.

The course structure offers students a taste of different engineering disciplines while enabling them to examine broad engineering issues, says Hagness. “Instead of structuring the themes based on specific NAE grand challenges, we came up with societal themes based on scale, starting with engineering challenges at the personal level and getting larger and larger,” she says.

Course sections rely on a team of faculty members who each present a theme and case studies to students, who work with two of the themes over the course of the semester.

Nicola J. Ferrier

Katherine (Trina) McMahon

Jeffrey S. Russell

Mechanical Engineering Professor Nicola Ferrier teaches students about engineering challenges that impact individuals, such as privacy, biometrics, rehabilitation engineering and assistive technologies. Civil and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Trina McMahon and Professor Jeffrey Russell discuss sustainable engineering solutions for challenges facing the developing world, including clean water, housing and health care.

Hagness teaches the third theme, which is engineering for the “megacity” and tackles challenges such as pollution, transportation, security, energy, and natural disasters in cities with populations above 10 million; Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Daniel Klingenberg at global engineering challenges focused on environmental issues like climate change and conservation.

And finally, Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Kristyn Masters expands the course horizons beyond Earth to investigate space travel, inhabiting space and deflecting near-Earth objects like asteroids.

Daniel J. Klingenberg

Kristyn S. Masters

Within each course section, students work in teams to develop oral and poster presentations. In the “megacity” group, for example, current projects include underground high-speed transportation to reduce congestion in cities and turning megacities into self-sufficient “eco-cities.”

“This course helped me decide to get the additional Technical Communication Certificate (in engineering) because it helped me realize that I really enjoy the presentation and communication aspect of this field,” says first-year student Kamin.

Class activities also challenge students to consider more than just technical issues when developing solutions to engineering problems. “Engineering is fundamentally a design process with both technical and nontechnical constraints,” says Hagness. “We’re trying to emphasize the importance of a broad perspective: Engineering solutions are influenced by political, environmental, ethical, legal and social constraints.”

“That perspective will help students in all of their future coursework here as well as wherever their career takes them.”

The course is funded by the College of Engineering 2010 Initiative, which seeks to increase cross-disciplinary research and education on campus to respond to changes in the engineering field, such as technological advancements and global competition.

“The long-term vision is to expand the offering of this course to students from all over campus,” says Hagness. “Having a more diverse environment in the classroom would help the engineering students because ultimately, they are going to be working on technologies that have to be embraced by the public.”

That message resonates with Kamin. “The most valuable thing I learned in this course is that the communication of information is just as important as obtaining that information in the first place,” she says.

“Without being able to communicate your research or the effect it will have on society, it is impossible to get people excited about your work.”

The Wisconsin students were paired with 22 UCT students and stayed on the UCT campus. Though UW-Madison has hosted LeaderShape for more than a decade, this is the first time the program has been held in Africa, and it’s the first time American students have gone overseas to participate.

Early New Year’s Day, the UW-Madison students flew more than 20 hours to Cape Town. They spent the first few days adjusting to a time zone eight hours ahead of Wisconsin. In keeping with advice from UCT chemical engineering associate professor Duncan Fraser, the students used exercise and sunshine to beat the jet-lag. They explored downtown Cape Town, climbed Table Mountain and toured the Cape Peninsula, which is home to overly curious baboons and penguins content to merely sway in the wind.

On Day 6 (Sunday, January 6) of the trip, the UCT students arrived for LeaderShape, a six-day program focused on developing leadership qualities and identifying personal visions for changing the world. This year’s cross-cultural session was “the most intense LeaderShape I’ve seen,” says co-lead facilitator and UW-Madison alum Kristin Skarie.

The UCT students hailed from many African, Asian and European countries, as well as a variety of racial and class backgrounds. Their variety of perspectives, combined with those of the UW-Madison students, led to conversations that found a deep level of authenticity, says LeaderShape co-lead facilitator Jamie Washington. Immediately, the UW-Madison and UTC students bonded. “We have come together perfectly,” says Joey Laspe, a UW-Madison nuclear engineering student.

Abbott Laboratories and a private contributor, Gary Wendt, sponsored the trip. Students had an opportunity to meet and thank Wendt when he visited Cape Town during LeaderShape (January 6 to 12). Wendt and College of Engineering Dean Paul Peercy spoke to students about what it takes to be an effective leader. Vision and character are the two qualities central to leadership, according to Peercy. For Wendt, every vision needs to be grounded in reality and every leader needs to be persuasive enough to get people to believe in an idea.

Wendt’s own vision led him to support the trip. “We are no longer citizens of Madison or Cape Town, but citizens of the world,” he says. “Why I’m excited about being involved in this is it’s an opportunity to get engineers out of a relatively closed environment and into another environment. Being in another country is an interesting chance to learn.”

Both UW-Madison and UCT students found the LeaderShape program valuable. “I learned so much more about myself in five days than I have learned in years,” says Lesego Mosime, a construction studies student at UCT. “It was a beautiful experience for me.”

During the final week of the trip (January 13 to 18), the group had to put their teamwork and motivation skills to the test. The students worked at the Edith Stephens Wetland Park, a small preserve set in the middle of five poor townships on the outskirts of Cape Town. The pond at the park has been choked off by water hyacinth, and students spent four laborious days tossing the weed into tall piles along the banks, as well as helping with other small maintenance projects around the preserve. “The next time I see a water hyacinth, which may be in my dad’s fish pond, I’m going to throw it over the fence,” says Craig MacKenzie, a UW-Madison civil engineering student.

The hot, sweaty, mucky, nasty work—as facilitator and UW-Madison educational policy studies doctoral student JP Leary describes the project—was important to the park. With six dedicated staff members and no real funding, the park scratches out an existence in the barren Cape Flats region.

The pond is critical for the poverty-stricken communities at its borders. Winter in Cape Town means rain, and the pond keeps the water from flooding the townships. The invasive water hyacinth makes it harder for rain to run into the pond; students could envision the damage waist-high water might inflict on the tiny homes after they toured one community, Philippi, the day (January 13) before the project.

The pond offers relief from the gray, dusty landscape of the Cape Flats, as well as a home to many bird and wildlife species that risk losing their breeding spots as the hyacinth ruins the wetland ecosystem. Denis Kow Son Wong, a UCT computer and electrical engineering student, wants to continue the project by educating township kids about the value the pond has for their communities and their wildlife. “If we don’t teach them or educate them on what we did—in this case, taking out the hyacinths and maybe bringing new hope to the wildlife—inevitably the place will end up as it was before, as if we didn’t make any difference at all,” says Wong. “They’d be walking blind past this pond.”

Throughout the project, the students encouraged each other and stayed enthusiastic about working in weather that alternated between blistering hot or chilly, windy and rainy. “These very different student groups came quickly together as one and it’s very gratifying to see that spirit of collaboration make it all the way through to the end,” says Adrienne Thunder, a LeaderShape facilitator and senior advisor in the UW-Madison College of Letters and Science. “The students have been excellent representatives of both institutions.”

All too soon, January 18 arrived and the UW-Madison students packed and departed South Africa for the long flight home. However, the experience has left students from both sides of the Atlantic with strong cross-cultural relationships. “During LeaderShape, people wanted to get along, and it was easy to trust each other and talk openly,” says Ahmed Akhalwaya, a UCT computer engineering student.

Andrew Elizondo, a UW-Madison engineering mechanics and astronautics student, agrees that the Madison and UCT students got very close in a short amount of time. “I see us still cracking jokes a year from now,” he says. “It’s not really over.”

More than 100 people attended the fall 2007 Pic-Nuke—one of several social, service and outreach activities that build community among UW-Madison American Nuclear Society student chapter members. (Large image)

As a glistening sun rose over the University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering campus on a summer Friday morning, latecomers straggled into Mickie’s Dairy Bar.

By 7 a.m., 11 members of the UW-Madison chapter of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) had settled onto red vinyl stools in the corner tables of the breakfast diner. As Sadie the waitress kept the coffee cups brimming, students and faculty members slipped into casual conversation and occasional gossip.

Fueled by “scramblers”

The tradition of gathering at Mickie’s on Friday mornings dates back 15 years. The ANS faculty advisor, Engineering Physics Assistant Professor Paul Wilson, says he started coming to Mickie’s as a graduate student in 1992 for the infamous “scramblers,” which are a mix of fried potatoes, eggs, meat, gravy and cheese that current ANS members say they can handle—as long as they lie down afterward.

The Friday breakfast club is only one of several frequent gatherings for the highly active chapter. ANS boasts national recognition as the two-time winner of the national ANS Glasstone Award for an outstanding student section.

The UW-Madison nuclear engineering department, and the nuclear field in general, is smaller than other types of engineering, says chapter president Jeremy Roberts, a fifth-year nuclear engineering undergraduate. The result, he says, is a close-knit community for the nearly 60 active members of ANS.

Connections among those ANS members will carry into the professional world, says public information officer Brian Kiedrowski, a nuclear engineering graduate student. “Your friends will become your colleagues, and you need these colleagues in a field like nuclear,” he says.

Kiedrowski says at the heart of ANS is a cause that distinguishes it from similar engineering organizations in other departments. “There is a lot of public misunderstanding about nuclear engineering, and our goal is to bring understanding of its role in society,” he says. “We want to tell people what we do.”

The networking component of ANS is on full display at its larger social gatherings, such as the Pik-Nuke, a picnic for ANS members, faculty and friends held each semester.

Generating community

Despite chilly weather, a sizeable crowd walked almost two miles from the UW-Madison campus to a local park for the fall 2007 Pik-Nuke. Brats, burgers and a visit with Bucky Badger kept spirits of the approximate 100 attendees higher than the 50 degree weather.

Roberts describes the connection between ANS social activities and the group’s sense of community as a “chicken and the egg” cycle: The activities bolster the community, but there is also an inherently strong community that likes to do activities together.

ANS members use social events as rewards and incentives for active membership in the group, which requires participation in public outreach, ANS service, community service and professional development, says Wilson.

In addition, the solid, involved ANS community encourages members to participate in outreach events such as Boy Scout badge workshops and high school presentations, says Kiedrowski.

For ANS, community service and social events often blend together for charitable causes. During National Engineers Week, casually known as E-week, ANS and Mickie’s Dairy Bar host a scrambler-eating competition for campus student organizations. ANS wins every year, according to communications officer Amy Wiersma, a nuclear engineering undergraduate student. “We have year-round training, so of course we dominate,” she says.

Together, Mickie’s and ANS donate $1 (50 cents each) for every scrambler eaten during E-week to the American Heart Association.

Students who take on leadership roles in ANS have an opportunity to gain valuable experience, especially in managing a budget, says Wilson. “I’ve seen a lot of students mature over the years,” he says. “Employers appreciate if you can demonstrate actual contributions to a student organization.”

Focusing energy

Roberts agrees his leadership in ANS has been important and says it has brought a sense of organization to his scatter-brained nature. “I’ve learned to time-manage and delegate—and that you can’t do everything,” he says.

The current group of ANS student leaders is above average in dedication and in the attitude they bring to their respective roles, says Wilson. “The leaders are who make it all happen and keep people interested in staying involved,” he says.

He says the ANS group has become more inclusive since his graduate school days. An increase in the number of non-elected positions, which give a student responsibility to organize a single event or activity, has provided even more opportunities for active members to gain leadership experience.

Multiple ANS members say an important element to the group is the combination of work and play. The small nuclear engineering major means that students see each other frequently in classes—and, says Roberts, one of the most important functions of ANS activities is to give nuclear students a way to interact casually, outside of class.

Overall, the current ANS leaders are working to carry on the group’s tradition of involvement. “I just hope we can continue to mimic the success of recent years,” Roberts says. “I have faith in the people around me that we can do just that.”