Colorado State University offers two new online Master's of Engineering degrees

Colorado State University OnlinePlus announces two new Master’s of Engineering degrees to meet the needs of today’s workplace. The Master’s of Engineering degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering Management have both been designed with industry input and are taught by faculty on the forefront of engineering research.

“Electrical and computer engineers are in demand across virtually every industry, allowing students to pair their passion with this advanced education,” says Dr. Tony Maciejewski, department head and ECE professor.

As one of the few online graduate degrees in this discipline, this program features areas of focus, including computer engineering, power and energy Engineering, and systems engineering.

The new online Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering with an Engineering Management Specialization features a curriculum that blends engineering processes with business elements to give students the combination of management concepts and technical focus. The curriculum follows the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Knowledge Base standards and covers concepts in engineering project management and maintenance; business analysis, communication, finance, and marketing; and systems engineering foundations and architecture.

To learn more about these degree programs, visit www.online.colostate.edu/degrees/electrical-computer-engineering orwww.online.colostate.edu/degrees/engineering-management for faculty bios, course descriptions, registration dates, and more. Contact Michael Macklin at CSU OnlinePlus with specific questions, 970-491-7583.

Colorado State University OnlinePlus programs and educational opportunities, offered through the Division of Continuing Education, support the University's land-grant mission by providing graduate and undergraduate degrees, professional development training, certificate programs, online credit and noncredit courses, and industry-specific training online and at learning centers across the Front Range. For more information, visit www.online.colostate.edu or call 970-491-5288.

New profile posted: As a mechanical engineering professor, Shanon Reckinger researches ways to improve ocean modeling and crusades for women in engineering

Shanon Reckinger

STEMming the Tide

In a dual role, the mechanical engineering professor at Fairfield University aims to improve computational methods for modeling oceans and climate while she advocates for women in engineering.

By Tom Gibson

As a mechanical engineering student, Shanon Reckinger could’ve pursued a conventional career of designing cars, airplanes, or some other product in a manufacturing and industrial setting. Or she could’ve steered toward designing MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) and HVAC systems for buildings, like many consulting engineers do. “None of that interested me. I really liked working on projects that had more of a societal impact, and that was really natural with ocean modeling because most of the work is done to further understand the climate and climate change,” she relates.

A unique and noble career choice indeed, but the interesting part is that it may involve another factor besides helping society. “I think that’s really common for most women,” Reckinger says. She would know about this from her vantage point as the Clare Boothe Luce Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Fairfield University in Connecticut, a position that has her advocating for women in engineering.

Across the nation, growth in the number of women enrolling in engineering curriculums has stagnated and shown inconsistencies. For example, Fairfield’s Mechanical Engineering Department has 55 freshmen, and 8 are women. “That’s pretty low,” Reckinger says. “It’s very discipline specific. Some of the engineering disciplines like civil, biomedical, environmental, chemical are really popular with women. Lots of places you can find a fifty-fifty split, but for disciplines like mechanical engineering or electrical or computer/software engineering, the ratio is still really off.” Why? “There are still not many women in faculty positions in those disciplines. I think it’s hard for female students to connect, and sometimes they might feel like they’re not in the right place because they’re so different from everyone around them.”

But Reckinger doesn’t think we should focus just on increasing the percentage of women in engineering. She acknowledge that there may be times a woman is exposed to science and engineering and fully understands the possibilities but just doesn’t have an interest in it. “I don’t want women to be scared or uncomfortable or unwelcome. Or anyone, because there are many minority groups that are underrepresented in engineering,” as she puts it. “I really enjoy being a role model and just encouraging everyone to find their path in life.”

Reckinger, 28, grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and her father was a civil engineer.“I always liked math and physics in high school,” she recalls, and her guidance counselors helped her select a college that offered engineering. This led her to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she tried engineering. “I really liked it.”

Then Reckinger further narrowed her career choice. “I really like the breadth of mechanical engineering, and it’s also the field that has fluids, which I really like because of its strong math and physics,” she explains. St. Thomas didn’t have any fluids courses when she went there, “but I had little peeks of it here and there, and then I took it my first year of graduate school. That’s when I really started to get into it.” She got her M.S. in mechanical engineering and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. Her advisor in graduate school specialized in applying computational methods to fluids and showed her a project he was working on, Reckinger recalls. “When I saw it, it was by far the most interesting of the ones I had seen.”

This sampling of Reckinger’s ocean modeling work shows a simulation of the 2010 Chile Tsunami.

Ocean modeling requires a strong fluids background, and this in turn requires a strong math and physics background. “I was taking a ton of applied math courses. Then there’s a ton of programming,” Reckinger recalls. “I became familiar with large parallel machines and computing. I had to also get the general ocean knowledge versus general fluids – what’s different about the ocean; how do the equations change?”

Most of Reckinger’s research focuses on developing advanced numerical techniques to improve the accuracy and efficiency of ocean models. “You change these equations that are analytic in such a way that you can solve them on the computer. There are all these numerical methods that have to be formulated to do that,” she says. “I’m improving methods that can be used in some of these big ocean models used at the lab.”

Reckinger says she sees it as filling a need. “There’s a general mechanical engineering fluids CFD community, and then there’s this totally separate ocean community, and they don’t always share information. The general fluids area is much further advanced in their numerics than the ocean community. That was part of the motivation for the projects I worked on.” The gap is closing. “The ocean models used for the last 50 years are considering these new methods that have been used for quite awhile now in the other community.”

With her doctoral thesis entitled "Adaptive Wavelet-Based Ocean Circulation Modeling," Reckinger takes an integrated approach for modeling common ocean phenomena such as tsunamis, boundary currents, and sea ice. Her research has taken her to the Los Alamos National Research Lab in New Mexico and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland. At Los Alamos, she worked with a researcher doing ocean modeling in an effort to simulate the entire global climate.

After getting her doctoral degree, Reckinger conducted a full national search to find a faculty position. She sought a teaching school but also wanted to do research, and “I’ve always wanted to live on the east coast,” she adds. Having landed at Fairfield, she’s excited about the Clare Booth Luce program and the funding and opportunities it presents. She teaches fluid dynamics and numerical methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including courses in numerical methods, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics, and gas dynamics.

The Henry Luce Foundation's Clare Boothe Luce Program awarded Fairfield a $404,439 grant to create the professorship Reckinger holds. It was earmarked for mechanical engineering and covers three years of salary, three years of benefits, and five years of support for a career development fund.

Reckinger (second from left) is mentoring mechanical engineering students on a project to collect rainwater from a campus building roof for watering lawns and shrubs on campus as part of a senior design course taught by Shahrokh Etemad (left).

In Clare Boothe Luce's bequest establishing this program, she sought "to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach" in science, mathematics, and engineering. The 21-year-old program has become the single most significant source of private support for women in those fields. Clare Boothe Luce was a playwright, journalist, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut as well as the widow of Henry R. Luce, the magazine publisher who created icons such as Time, Fortune, Life, and Sports Illustrated.

Reckinger works in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines with engineering faculty and colleagues in the College of Arts & Sciences. She works closely with female students in the School of Engineering and elsewhere at Fairfield. “I just try to connect with them personally and have them be comfortable around me. Since we have such a small school and small population of women, I’m doing it more on a personal level,” she says.

As Reckinger puts it, “I’m trying to give them some perspective and broaden their view of these fields and have them not think of mechanical engineers as one particular type of person in one particular field. It’s so broad. It’s just about making people feel comfortable and making them understand that a variety of personalities and experience levels and perspectives are welcome in the field.”

Her advocating work has Reckinger getting involved with a WISTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program, and she wants to start a Society for Women in Engineering chapter at Fairfield. She interacts with high schoolers that come to Fairfield and carries out community events like the Discovery Museum and an event for Women’s History Month at nearby Bridgeport. A camp on Fairfield’s campus for high school women has them learn about science and engineering, and Reckinger has a group of five or so from Bridgeport do a research project with her for two weeks.

In the final analysis, Reckinger says, “I really just want people to do whatever they like. I don’t like them to be scared away for the wrong reasons. Maybe you just don’t know exactly what interests you and how to apply it. I feel like that’s part of the faculty’s job to explore that with the students and let them think about it.”

North Carolina State Zia Lecture on Panama Canal expansion draws a record 800 attendees

Three leaders behind the remarkable Panama Canal expansion project discussed their roles in one of the 21st century's most challenging engineering ventures before hundreds of engineers at a North Carolina State University lecture event on Sept. 24.

The presentations by Alberto Alemán Zubieta, former CEO of the Panama Canal Authority; Michael Newbery, locks design manager with MWH Global; and Joseph Cazares, deputy program manager and locks construction manager with CH2M Hill, offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the $5.25 billion Panama Canal expansion project.

The expansion adds a new set of locks at the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that will double the canal's capacity, allowing more and larger ships to use the 100-year-old waterway. Construction is expected to finish in 2015.

The event, held at the Raleigh Marriott City Center in downtown Raleigh, NC, was part of the Paul Zia Distinguished Lecture Series in Civil Engineering and Construction, an annual NC State event featuring prominent engineers in the field. The lecture series is presented by the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, the Constructed Facilities Laboratory, and the NC State Engineering Foundation.

Many of those who packed the venue — the 800 people who attended were a record for the event — were NC State engineering alumni.

Alemán was the longtime administrator of the Panama Canal Authority, the autonomous agency that manages the Panama Canal and the expansion project. His 16 years of canal leadership included overseeing the 1999 transfer of control of the canal from the United States to the Panamanian government. He stepped down in early September to return to private practice in project management.

Newbery has worked on the Panama Canal expansion program for 13 years. Since 2009, he has been the design manager for the MWH Global-led design joint venture on the third set of locks project. He has more than 30 years of engineering and design experience, including more than 25 years with MWH Global. His work has included designing, managing and being the principal in charge for major lock and dam projects on four continents.

Cazares is deputy program manager for the Panama Canal expansion program and construction manager for the new locks portion of the contract. He is a licensed engineer with more than 30 years of experience in the design and construction of billion-dollar public facility and infrastructure programs. His experience has included transportation, water-wastewater, and energy projects for both public and private organizations, and he specializes in large-scale program management assignments involving complex schedule, contractual, funding, and project phasing elements.

The Zia Distinguished Lecture Series was established in 2002 to honor the accomplishments of Dr. Paul Zia, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at NC State. Zia is a leading figure in the fields of concrete and structural engineering and served as head of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at NC State for nine years. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Previous Zia Lectures have featured Leslie Robertson, who led the structural design of the former World Trade Center; David Goodyear, the chief engineer behind the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge; and Bart Riberich and Lee Slade, who helped develop the technology behind some of North America’s most advanced retractable-roof sports stadiums.

Road warriors: NJIT students probe transportation issues

One of the most productive research areas at NJIT is transportation, drawing expertise from such diverse areas as architecture, civil engineering, management, and electrical engineering. A major component of the university’s outreach programs addressing questions of economic development, quality of life, and productivity in the region, transportation research was a major theme at the recent Dana Knox Student Research Showcase. Student researchers included:

Eugene Maina, doctoral student in transportation engineering, investigated the relationship between capacity and safety on freeways in New Jersey. He found that the number of crashes increased with the road capacity, while lower-capacity roads had a lower crash rate indicating that congestion may result in reduced speeds and a lower number of accidents. Associate Professor Janice Daniel is his advisor.

Civil Engineering’s Bridge Scour Team – Joshua Tooker, master’s student, seniors Shu Yi Tham, Melissa Salsano, and Piotr Wiszowaty led by Professor John Schuring – presented two projects dealing with the erosion around bridges that can cause damage and even failure. Tham presented the team’s survey of scour design and evaluation methods currently used by transportation agencies. Tooker presented findings that current methods tend to overestimate scour which leads to excessively conservative design. The team’s recommendations include new procedures for scour evaluation and a Decision Matrix Model to allow NJDOT to prioritize existing bridges for remediation and better predict scour for new bridges.

Zhaodong Huang, PhD student in transportation engineering advised by Associate Professor Rongfang Liu, developed a new method for measuring the performance of Automated People Movers (APMs) in airports. He proposes a composite index that incorporates system availability, system safety, customer satisfaction and utilization rate to be used to measure the engineering efficiency  of APM systems in airports.

Sim Liu, doctoral student in transportation engineering, developed a Drainage Information, Analysis and Mapping (DIAM) system to evaluate New Jersey’s aging stormwater drainage infrastructure. Professor Jay Meegoda is his advisor.

Manvi Saran, master’s student in environmental engineer advised by Professor Taha Marhaba, studied ways in which NJDOT could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their highway maintenance and construction projects.

Hifeng Yu, doctoral student in transportation, developed a maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) to deal with winter weather events in New Jersey. His advisor is Professor I. J. Chien.

Entech Engineering donates services to solar thermal project at Reading, PA homeless shelter

Solar Opportunity on the Horizon

By Courtney H. Diener-Stokes

Reading Eagle correspondent

Reading Eagle: Tyler Sizemore

Above, from left, Modesto Fiume, president of Opportunity House; Bob Elwell, HVAC manager for Energy Systems Installation; and Tom Green, lead project engineer, on the roof of Opportunity House, 420 N. Second St. where solar collector panels hopefully will be installed. Elwell and Green are both members of Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association, which has started a campaign to raise money to fund a solar hot water heating system at Opportunity House. Right, a diagram explaining how the proposed solar system would work.

Since its inception in 2005, the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association has sponsored community service projects centered on providing renewable energy solutions to non-profit organizations. This year Opportunity House, 430 N. Second St., was determined to be the ideal recipient.

"We felt that if you look at Reading, it's the poorest city in America," said Bill Hennessy, vice president of MAREA and owner of Berks Solar. "Opportunity House takes care of the poorest of the poor and we thought, 'what can we do to help them out?'"

Opportunity House is a multi-service organization that focuses on improving the lives of children, adults and families with the aim to help them become self-sufficient. Services include emergency shelter, supportive housing, meals, 24-hour-a-day childcare and advocacy for victims of child abuse.

MAREA is a non-profit organization dedicated to informing and educating the public about renewable energy production, energy efficiency and sustainable living.

When MAREA took into consideration the energy demands on Opportunity House to function on a daily basis as well as factoring in the cost involved in various renewable energy solutions, it determined the organization could best benefit from a solar hot water (solar thermal) system.

"What makes solar hot water great for Opportunity House is they have a huge demand for hot water for the shelter, day care" and daily operations, Hennessy said. "The more hot water you use, the more solar will benefit you."

He estimates Opportunity House will save approximately $4,000 annually with the solar thermal system.

"About $6,000 is what their gas bill is right now," he said. "Every dollar they don't spend on heating water they can spend on services for the poor and homeless."

Determining that Opportunity House had solid roof space in addition to ample solar access were more reasons MAREA felt it was the ideal candidate for a solar hot water system.

Modesto Fiume, president of Opportunity House, sees the project as a great opportunity to partner on a shared vision.

"It ties in with our focus as an organization about being sustainable," Fiume said. "It will also help us save some operating costs each month."

He also added it will complete a goal he has been working towards for approximately six years. Since that time Opportunity House has successfully accomplished building a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified technology center for children ages 4 to 13.

Hennessy said the solar thermal system would consist of 18 roof-mounted solar collectors, each 4 feet by 10 feet.

He explained that a pump circulates a propylene glycol and water mixture to the rooftop to the collectors where the sun will heat it and then it returns to a heat exchanger and heats the water in the storage tank. The heat from the that water tank is then transferred to a second heat exchanger and warms the incoming cold water when needed. The tanks will hold at least 2,500 gallons of water.

A backup water tank provides hot water on cloudy days or during the winter months.

"The natural gas backup is making up the difference if water isn't hot enough," Hennessy said.

After considering various hot water systems for the project, it was determined a pressurized glycol system would be most suitable.

MAREA anticipates installation of the system, which is scheduled to happen in the fall, will take two weeks.

The cost of the solar thermal project is estimated to be $110,0000, but thanks to the help of donations in labor and materials the cost currently stands at approximately $50,000.

"We go out in the public to raise funds," said Hennessy, who added no government funding will be used for the project.

MAREA launched their fund drive in May. Fundraising is being coordinated by Pier Ignozzi-Shaffer of Reading.

In addition to their fundraising efforts, MAREA has been successful in securing the donation of services and materials necessary to aid in completion of the project.

Individuals in the renewable energy field have been eager to get on board to offer their skills and resources to design, manage and successfully complete the project, which has led to a solid lineup of local leaders in the field coming on board.

MAREA board member, Tom Green, a professional engineer and certified energy manager, will be lead engineer on the project. Green is also the director of campus energy services at Kutztown University.

Bob Elwell, heating, ventilation and air conditioning manager of Energy Systems & Installation, in Jonestown, Lebanon County, is on board as well.

"The company will be donating its services as contractor for the installation," Hennessy said.

"It's a great project," Elwell said at a recent monthly MAREA meeting. "We want to do our part."

Elwell's son, Bryan, is manager of Hickory Ridge Solar, District Township, which joins the project as a supplier. It distributes UMA Solar products.

"The company will provide the solar collectors and other materials for the project at cost or at a greatly reduced rate," Hennessy said.

In addition, Entech Engineering, 4 S. Fourth St., is donating engineering and drawing services for the permit application.

"These companies are sharing their resources with the community," Hennessy said. "We hope this generosity is contagious and we are looking forward to the contributions necessary to complete the installation."

Contact Courtney Diener-Stokes: realestate@readingeagle.com.

Article courtesy of the Reading Eagle newspaper

(http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=395949).

Vincent Franceschi, P.E. joins PSI as executive vice president

Vincent Franceschi, P.E., has joined PSI as an executive vice president overseeing PSI’s offices in western states. He has led engineering services, environmental consulting, and analytical laboratory services companies. His core market sector experience has been strongly related to the electric power, nuclear, oil and gas (pipeline), DOE, and local municipal waste/landfill agencies. Before joining PSI, he was involved in leading Exponent, Evans Analytical Group, ENV America, EMCON, and ABB Impell. Franceschi earned his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and his MBA from St. Mary’s College. He will be based in PSI’s Oakland operations office.  

Professional Service Industries (PSI) (www.psiusa.com) is a consulting engineering and testing firm. PSI provides a range of environmental engineering and testing services, including environmental consulting, geotechnical engineering, construction materials testing and engineering, industrial hygiene services, facilities and roof consulting, and specialty engineering and testing services. Headquartered in Oakbrook Terrace, IL, a Chicago suburb, PSI operates from 100 offices in North America with more than 2,000 employees.

GEI Consultants’ Washington, D.C. office announces work on three major projects

GEI Consultants, a geotechnical, environmental, water resources, and ecological science and engineering firm, announces work on three new projects under the leadership of its Washington, D.C. office:

Washington Marriott Marquis Hotel, Washington D.C.

Hensel Phelps Construction Co. and D.C. Slurry Partners

GEI provided environmental, geotechnical, and construction services for the new $520 million, 105,000-square-foot Washington Marriott Marquis Hotel in Washington, D.C., set to be completed in May 2014. Services provided included environmental site investigation, soil pre-characterization, value engineering of the foundation system, design of deep drilled shafts for the top down construction scheme, and field oversight during foundation construction. For this project, seven below-grade stories were constructed that required the installation of drilled shaft foundations and interior building columns at depths of more than 100 feet below ground. A top-down construction technique was used, a method that builds the permanent structure members of the basement along with the excavation from the top to the bottom. The four-star Washington Marriott Marquis Hotel was designed to earn LEED Silver certification and will be one of the largest hotels in the country to earn this achievement. GEI designed the foundation system to help accelerate the construction schedule while saving costs and fulfilling project requirements.

Washington D.C. Water Clean Rivers Project, Blue Plains Tunnel, Washington D.C.

GEI is providing geotechnical consultation and field services to the consultant construction management team (CCM) for the $330 million Blue Plains Tunnel design-build project in Washington, D.C. The CCM team is managed by EPC consultants and consists of site-specific engineering consultants. D.C. Water is in the process of constructing a 24,000-foot-long soft ground tunnel, the first and largest in a network of tunnels that will capture and convey the combined sewer overflow (CSO) that currently impacts the health of the rivers in Washington, D.C. GEI’s services include geotechnical consultation, instrumentation submittal and design reviews, a variety of construction oversight services, and geotechnical data management services. When the tunneling work begins at the end of this year, GEI will provide oversight of the instrumentation system, which will measure ground movement along the tunnel alignment and at four major shaft sites during construction. The firm also contributed design review and field inspection services during the construction of slurry walls, which ensure that construction upholds the design tolerance for the excavation support.

Wolf Creek Dam Gallery and Plaza Grouting Project, Russell County, KY

GEI has completed work as the technical lead and quality control representative for the Judy Company (TJC) on the $10 million Wolf Creek Dam Gallery and Plaza Grouting rehabilitation project. The Wolf Creek Dam project is the most critical structure in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ national inventory of dams. The project involved installing grout curtains in the gallery and plaza areas of the dam. During the project, GEI also focused on safeguarding the local ecosystem, including the quality of the water feeding into the nearby Wolf Creek Fish Hatchery.

For more information, visit www.geiconsultants.com.