I easily become discouraged these days; 2020 will be remembered for Covid-19 and a monumentally adversarial Presidential election, both of which make us wonder if we will ever return to better times. Fortunately for me I have just had an experience that gives me great confidence for the future – the completion of this year’s Senior Design Projects program.
I have been involved in this program of the University of Pittsburgh Civil and Environmental Engineering Department for two and a half decades and watched it evolve into an impressive capstone to our students’ academic careers. They are required to participate in implementation of a significant “near-real-world” engineering project in their final semester.
In recent years we have been averaging thirty-five or forty students each semester, usually grouped in six project teams. Normally the teams meet as a group twice a week for an hour dedicated to general project execution, then spend two hours as teams working on their specific projects. The semester culminates with a series of formal presentations in a large auditorium, before an audience of faculty, family, friends, and local engineering practitioners.
None of this works in the “Year of the Pandemic”. Last Spring, program coordinator John Sebastian managed to pick up the pieces when the University switched to on-line education in mid-semester and cobble together an acceptable remote format for the weekly sessions and the final presentations.
This Fall he took advantage of the lessons learned and effectively modified the program to adapt to this unique set of constraints. A key decision was to switch to smaller (four person) teams, recognizing the difficulty students in remote locations would have functioning efficiently as teams.
On-line sessions were limited to an hour twice a week in which all the students would participate remotely. These sessions were used for specific lectures related to topics like scheduling, risk management, and BIM (business information management); and for presentations by each team (three times in the semester). They were complemented by individual remote team meetings for coordination of design activities.
For their final presentations, each team produced a forty-five-minute film summarizing the implementation of their project. These were posted on the University website for review by interested parties. A week later each team was subjected to a thirty-minute remote question and answer session by a panel of reviewers composed of practitioners and faculty.
This turned out to be a particularly effective way for the students to complete their semester and their undergraduate careers. The format made it possible for remote reviewers to participate, in addition to the local ones who would have normally attended in person. Half a dozen Department alumni took advantage of the opportunity and made meaningful comments on the presentations.
I had the privilege of mentoring one of the teams this semester. We were approached by a member of a hunting and fishing club in Fayette County for advice on the replacement of a small bridge over the spillway of the dam that impounds a five-acre pond on their property. Our initial reaction was that this project did not involve a sufficient technical challenge for a Senior Design project.
In reality, however, it turned out to be an extremely comprehensive challenge including preparation of a storm-water runoff model for a one-hundred-year storm, a slope stability analysis confirming the ability of the earthen dam to support construction loads, and the design of a stilling basin and a large elliptical culvert.
Since the club wanted to perform as much of the necessary construction work as possible, the team was required to develop the budget and schedule for the project to a high degree of detail. The final product of their work was a package of deliverables comparable to what an established civil engineering firm would have produced.
Hiking/biking trails regularly serve as subjects for Senior Design projects. This term one team tackled the design of the missing link between the Three Rivers Heritage Trail in Pittsburgh and the Allegheny River Trail which eventually will run as far north as Franklin. Their innovative solution was a bridge across the Norfolk Southern Railroad and a route north between Route 28 and the railroad.
Another team worked with a University organization promoting urban cycling to improve links between Oakland and Squirrel Hill. Their design included the insertion of a two-way bike lane in the middle of the Boulevard of Allies from Dawson Street through Schenley Park, as well as dedicated bike lanes on Schenley Drive through the park.
Another popular design project subject each term is flood abatement in local communities. This semester a team tackled the annual problems Plum Township has with Little Plum Creek flooding a group of ball fields; their recommendation was that the stream bed cross section be increased.
The problems the Pittsburgh Water and Sanitary Authority has with the Highland Park Reservoir have been widely publicized. One of our teams produced a design of a large, submerged post-tensioned concrete tank as a solution. Other impressive projects included an eleven-story parking garage to replace the existing one serving Western Psychiatric Hospital at the corner of Oakland and Terrace Streets, an alternative design for the rehabilitation of the Almono Roundhouse in the Hazlewood Green project, and design of a soldier pile/concrete panel retaining wall to remediate a persistent landslide on Gill Road in Pleasant Hills.
Two Environmental Engineering teams also performed noteworthy projects – a modern water treatment system for an off-the-grid facility in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada and design of constructed wetlands at the Frick Environmental Center to provide adequate treatment of waste water to permit it to be discharged into a drip field.
The forty-one students on these ten teams are indeed impressive. The combination of their native intelligence, their work ethic, and their desire to learn has produced a group of young people admirably equipped to enter the real world as engineers-in-training. It is easy to feel confident about the future that this generation will eventually dominate.