The University of Florida (UF) team won the 2008 Water Environment Federation’s (WEF) Design Competition during WEFTEC.08 - WEF's 81st Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference, held in Chicago. The UF team's project, "Design Alternatives for the City of Tallahassee Reclaimed Water Project,” was selected from a pool of nine WEF Student Chapter design teams from across North America.
Now in its seventh year, the competition is a program of the WEF Students & Young Professionals Committee (SYPC), led by Michelle Hanson, an engineer with CDM and member of the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environment Association. Based on a student competition developed in 1999 held at the Florida Water Environment Association (FWEA), the competition is intended to promote “real world” design experience for students interested in pursuing an education and career in water/wastewater engineering and sciences.
The competition tasks individuals or teams of students within a WEF student chapter to design and present a program meeting the requirements of the problem statement. Over the past nine years, the UF design team has won first place in six of the nine competitions held in the spring at the Florida WEA’s annual conference and three out of the seven competitions at WEFTEC.
Sponsored by MWH, CDM, Black & Veatch, Brown and Caldwell, CH2M HILL, Greeley and Hansen, Hazen and Sawyer and Malcolm Pirnie, each team presented their projects to an audience of 130 and a panel of eight judges comprised of one representative per sponsor. The winning team of Felipe Behrens, Anthony Centurione, Matthew Diamond, Brendan McGrath, Laila Salter, and Molly Scheiner, along with their faculty advisor, University of Florida Associate Professor John Sansalone, Ph.D., P.E., were presented certificates and award recognition of $3,000 from WEF Past President Al Goodman.
Planning and coordinators of the event were Lauren Zuravnsky, design competition co-chair, Stephanie Spalding and Louis Storino.
For more information, visit www.wef.org/AboutWater/ForStudents/ UniversityCenter/2008+Design+Competition+Winners.htm.
