Benedictine College Engineering

Congratulations to Maria Clarke for being awarded the St. Patrick Award for Excellence in Engineering at the Honors Convocation on Wednesday!

The St. Patrick Award for Excellence in Engineering is presented to an outstanding graduating senior who best exemplifies the mission of the School of Engineering to produce graduates who are excellent problem solvers, committed to the highest ethical standards, and proficient communicators.

Congratulations to Samuel Gagnon on being awarded the "St. Benedict Award for Outstanding Underclassman" at the Honors Convocation on Wednesday!

The School of Engineering presents the St. Benedict Award for Outstanding Underclassman to an engineering major in the Freshman or Sophomore year who demonstrates excellent academic achievement, engagement in the classroom, and shows great potential for future success in the study and practice of engineering.

Congratulations to the Benedictine College Concrete Canoe team! The team of students competed at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Student Symposium held in Carbondale, Illinois, from April 9-11. The team finished fourth overall in a competition against 13 schools in the Mid-American Region including KU, K-State, and Missouri S&T. Notably, Benedictine College paddlers came in second place in all five races. Additionally, they placed in the top 5 in each of the other categories: Proposal, Presentation, and Prototype. Planning for this project started at the beginning of the academic year and all those involved put in many hours to make this project a success. Congratulations and well done to all those involved!

On Wednesday, the Benedictine student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers hosted Paul Johnson '20 for its final lunch and learn of the semester. Paul presented on some of his recent work on the Kansas City Chief's training facility expansion, an exciting project full of structural engineering challenges. The expansion included adding a players' lounge and a larger, column-free weight room. The project presented two significant challenges: designing a building to sit atop a 14-foot retaining wall, and removing two pre-engineering metal building columns while transferring loads through a horizontal truss. Paul walked through how these challenges were analyzed from design to installation, giving our students a plethora of interesting ideas to think about!

This past week, the School of Engineering hosted its annual presentation days. On Thursday, our junior Mechanical Engineering students kicked things off with presentations of their projects, which ranged from mechanical can shredders to mounted log splitters and everything in between. The following day, seniors from each discipline presented on their capstone projects, which included everything from a portable electrocardiogram machine with real-time arrhythmia detection to reconstruction of a road owned by the monks of St. Benedict's Abbey. We were also proud to present awards to our top graduating seniors at the senior awards' lunch. We are very excited to see the amazing things our students will accomplish in the future!

You can find more information about the junior and senior design projects by navigating to the Presentation Day Program using the following link: https://linktr.ee/BenedictineEngineering

Please join us tomorrow, April 24th, for our annual Senior Design Presentation Day! You can view the program for the day including descriptions of all the projects, along with the schedule of presentations and instructions for joining online or in-person at the link below. We would love to have you join us either in person or virtually!

https://linktr.ee/BenedictineEngineering

Tomorrow, April 23rd, starts our first of two Presentation Days in the School of Engineering! We are excited to have our junior Mechanical Engineering students share the projects they have been hard at work on this past semester. The first session will take place from 10:50 am - 12:05 pm and the second session from 1:00 - 2:15 pm, both on the first floor of Westerman Hall. Prototypes will be displayed in a trade show style. We would love to have you join us for this special event tomorrow!

Stay tuned for more information regarding our Senior Design presentations, which will be taking place this Friday, April 24th!

This past weekend, Benedictine's Concrete Canoe Team attended the annual ASCE Mid-America Student Symposium, hosted by Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The team spent many months preparing for the event, researching, training for the races, and building their prototype. Some of the highlights of the weekend included the races, where Benedictine's team placed second in every single race! The team also competed in the concrete bowling ball competition and the 1st and 2nd year mystery design challenge, where the team placed 5th. The weekend also served as a great preparation as we anticipate our work as co-hosts of the Student Symposium in 2027. Great job to all our students, and we look forward to seeing everyone in Kansas next spring!

This morning, our senior Mechanical Engineering students conducted the Factory Acceptance Testing of their final prototypes. The teams received lots of helpful feedback and will be working hard making the final iterations on and adjustments to their designs before Presentation Day next Friday, April 24th! Way to go, seniors!

Our final featured team of this week is the Core Cleaning Crew. The team is developing a cleaning system for Henkel, which will remove foam and mold release agent residue from their polypropylene injection molding cores. The team is in the final assembly phase and will soon move on to testing their prototype. Some of their favorite aspects of the project occurred during the manufacturing phase, where they had the opportunity to use many tools that Benedictine’s shop has to offer, including the CNC, plasma cutter, and casting equipment.