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UNH team places 2nd at national Environmental Design Contest Faculty advisor and student also win awards DURHAM, N.H.—A team of UNH engineering and English students won second place in their task at the 15th Annual Environmental Design Contest held April 3-7 at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M. The students designed a treatment technology to remove ammonia and hydrogen peroxide from wastewater generated by the semiconductor industry. Andy Rippert, of Stratford, Conn., won the contest’s Terry McManus Memorial Student Award, and team advisor Kevin Gardner won the Memorial Faculty Award. The other members of the UNH team were Ann Bryant of Somersworth; Jessica Cristallo of Weatogue, Conn.; Jonah DeWaters of Portland, Maine; Scott Greenwood of Nashua; Jared Kosin of Richland, Mich. and Kevin Martindale of Dover. The competition, sponsored by WERC: A Consortium for Environmental Education and Technology Development, challenges student teams to develop solutions for real-world environmental problems that have been submitted by various companies and government institutions. “It gave me a chance to do real research and design stuff. To sit down and build something from nothing was a great experience,” said DeWaters. “It was a lot of work and a lot of fun at the same time. You come out of it knowing how to give a professional presentation a little bit better than you did before.” While the environmental engineering students concentrated on developing the technology, Bryant and Kosin, both English majors, focused on communications and outreach for Radical Solutions, the fictitious company created by the team. In looking for something to differentiate the team from the rest of the competition, Kosin took on the challenge of developing and testing a public outreach program. “After meeting with brilliant engineering students on a daily basis, I learned how to better assess technical information and simultaneously provide decisive input,” said Kosin. “Thanks to my teammates and advisor, I also learned how to effectively engage an audience during presentations and deliver a clear message.” UNH's interdisciplinary approach has helped make it a winner at the competition for the past several years, according to Gardner, Robert C.Davison Professor of Environmental Engineering and director of the Environmental Research Group at UNH. “That’s the value of this that I really shoot for—to give them an interdisciplinary experience, otherwise, when they graduate, they will find that you can have great depth of knowledge in a particular area, but little breadth” he said. All teams prepared four different presentations: written, oral, a bench-scale model and poster, as part of the competition. They were judged by environmental professionals representing government, industry and academia. “The design contest brings together industry, government and academia in the search for novel and innovative environmental solutions,” WERC Executive Director Abbas Ghassemi, said. “The contest provides students with tremendous experience that will help them in pursuit of their careers.” The WERC
consortium is comprised of New
Mexico State University (its administrative location), the New
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the University
of New Mexico, Diné
College, Los Alamos
and Sandia National
Laboratories.
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