University of Florida and North Dakota State University tie for First Place in the 2007 WEF Design Competition

Alexandria, Va. - The Water Environment Federation (WEF) announces the University of Florida (UF) STAR Gators team and North Dakota State University as winners of the 2007 WEF Design Competition. The event took place last month during WEFTEC®.07 - WEF's 80th Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference - in San Diego, Calif. The UF team's project, "Design Alternatives for the Expansion of the South Tampa Area Reclaimed Project (STAR) in Tampa, Florida” and the NDSU teams’ project “Design for the Future: Upgrade of an Existing HPO-AS Process” were selected from a pool of six WEF Student Chapter design teams from across North America.

Now in its sixth year, the competition is a program of the WEF Students & Young Professionals Committee led by Michelle Hanson, an engineer with CDM and member of the California Water Environment Association. Based off a student competition developed in 1999, the competition is intended to promote “real world” design experience for students interested in pursuing an education and/or 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 eight years, the University of Florida design team has won first place in five of the eight competitions held in the spring at the Florida Water Environment Association’s annual conference and two out of the 6 competitions at WEFTEC.  North Dakota State University is celebrating their first time in winning first place at WEFTEC.   

Sponsored by MWH, CDM, CH2M HILL, and Greeley and Hansen, each team presented their projects to an audience of 60 and a panel of four judges comprised of one representative per sponsor. The winning team of Ken Friedman, Sachin Gadekar, Stephanie Henry, Wendi Leanhardt, Rebecca McLarty, Deborah Rhoden, Katrina Roberts, and Christian Schmidt along with their faculty advisor University of Florida Associate Professor John Sansalone, Ph.D., P.E., and the winning team of Christopher Hill, Corey Bjornberg, Zachary Maruska, Brian Gaddie, Marja Ekola, Celia Norgaard, Mathew Baker, and Dustin Dale along with their faculty advisor North Dakota State University Professor Wei Lin were presented certificates and award recognition of $2,000 each from WEF Past President James H. Clark.

For more information, visit WEF’s Student Programs and Services homepage.