Three graduate students from UB's environmental engineering program won first place in a student design contest sponsored by the Water Environment Federation in Chicago this September.
The winning team was made up of Jean Balent, Samuela Franceschini and Howard Kellick, who worked together to consult on contaminants in water for Letchworth State Park in Castile, N.Y.
Alan Rabideau, associate professor of civil, structural, and environmental engineering, who served as the project's faculty advisor, said the project was a marriage between classroom and real-world experience.
"The university was approached by Letchworth with a study required by New York State to determine if the water collected by systems at the park for transportation to reservoirs should be classified as ground water or surface water," said Rabideau.
According to Rabideau, this issue arose because despite the fact that water collected at Letchworth is groundwater, which undergoes a natural filtration process, the water is collected in shallow pools susceptible to the same bacteria and other contaminates as surface water.
The team made long-term and short-term recommendations to the park, and advised them as to how the park could negotiate with New York State to implement their suggestions, said Rabideau.
Letchworth originally wanted the students to check for the presence of contaminates by visiting and examining the water on a frequent basis, which would be very time consuming and labor intensive, according to Rabideau.
As an alternative, Rabideau suggested the park buy sensors that would automatically send data to UB computers, enabling the students to evaluate change in water quality on a more frequent basis.
The project stemmed from a course titled Environmental Engineering Design, which requires a culminating design project, said Rabideau. Kellick noted that since the course was new, the project was somewhat experimental.
"It was an interesting idea to bring a real project into the class, and then carrying it on through the summer," said Kellick.
The project was originally developed and worked on by a class of 13 members, but the team of three continued to work during the summer and developed their presentation.
"The project was really good in many ways, because it was a real project - we had to pay attention to details that a real consultant would," said Franceschini.
The competition was the first of its kind and was developed by schools with environmental engineering programs that were interested in forming a competition similar to those that exist for other engineering disciplines.
According to Franceschini, UB competed against teams from the University of Arkansas, University at Florida, and the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. The four universities' projects were judged by a panel of eight professionals and professors in the field of environmental engineering.
"It was very intimidating, coming into that room and seeing about a hundred students, as well as the judges," Balent said. "The feedback was good - this was a very, very useful work experience."
At first, Kellick worried because UB's project was of a much larger scope than those of the other competitors and therefore less focused. He thought the conference was "really cool" and enjoyed the opportunity to meet professionals and students in his field.
According to Rabideau, the three students make up half of the first graduating class in environmental engineering this spring and are responsible for bringing national attention to UB's program.
"It was important for us to win, to know that the work we have done was good enough for us to win," Franceschini said. "The conference was a huge, amazing experience."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
