Return to the "POINTER VIEW"
                         May 3, 2002

Arkansas team wins engineering contest

Story and photo by Pfc. Nate Jastrzemski
Staff Writer

The U.S. Military Academy hosted the West Point Bicentennial Engineering Design Contest finals Saturday in Herbert Hall, here.

Daniel T. Clawitter and Randal S. Pope, team name "OCTOPI," from the Arkansas School for Math and Science in Hot Springs, Ark., created the winning design at a price of $7,989.43.

The team moved into first place in the last 8 minutes of the competition edging out "CHN Hockey" team members Alexander Scheinker and Mike Barca of Clarkstown High School in New City, N.Y., who took second place. Team "Whatsfallingdown" members Leslie Anne Nicholson and Bharat Reddy of Tsucaloosa, Ala., came in third.

Clawitter and Pope will each receive a $15,000 cash scholarship that can be used at any school. Second and third place teams each receive $10,000 and $5,000 cash scholarships, respectively.

Event Coordinator Cathy Bale said contestants who completed the final round also took home new laptop computers like those they used during the contest. And, she added, the entire event was a huge success.

"More than 19,000 teams originally joined the competition from grades K-12 across the country and in DoD overseas schools," Bale said.

She explained that the contest had its roots laid more than seven years ago when Col. Stephan Ressler of the Civil and Mechanical Engineering department here began developing the computer program that would be used by students everywhere to design realistic bridges.

The academy wanted to hold the contest to commemorate 200 years of service to the nation, Bale said, and to stress an important facet of that service.

"The event commemorates USMA’s engineering heritage and the contributions of its graduates to the development of the nation’s infrastructure," she added.

The contest was endorsed and sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.