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Award-winning
Projects:
National
Recognition for Senior Design Projects
Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation Awards:
The James F. Lincoln
Arc Welding
Foundation offers annual awards to recognize and reward
achievement by engineering and technology students in solving
design, engineering, or arc welding fabrication problems.
The five criteria used to select
the winners are:
originality or ingenuity,
feasibility,
results
achieved or expected,
engineering
competence, and
clarity
of the presentation.
Since the Department of General Engineering first entered
this national competition in 1968,
125
senior design projects have been recognized
with this prestigious award. The number of these awards
that have been bestowed on GE senior design projects is
a testimonial to the high quality of work that can be found
through this business-education partnership. Congratulations
to all the winners!
Bernt
O. Larson Awards:
As
a memorial, and in recognition of his outstanding
contributions to the development of integrated design
education, the Bernt O. Larson Project Design Awards
in General Engineering were established by the Department
of General Engineering. The awards are presented
annually to senior student project design teams
judged by the faculty to have produced the best
engineering designs during a calendar year. The
award recognizes outstanding excellence in development
of a creative solution for a complex original engineering
problem. Each member of the first-place team receives
$200, and each member of the second-place team $100.
Members of these teams also receive certificates,
and names of first-place winners are inscribed on
a bronze plaque in the department office.
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Professor
Bernt O. Larson earned a BSCE in 1938, a MSCE in 1949, and
was a General Engineering faculty member from 1938 to 1974.
He had a distinguished career in the army, including many
engineering projects in the C-B-I theatre, and work in China
for which he received a medal of honor from the Chinese government.
Bernt is widely remembered for having developed and put into
place the concept of a capstone senior design course for General
Engineering students, and for being one of the first faculty
members to understand and to cultivate the educational links
between the University and private industry. His ideas have
been instrumental in helping ease the student transition from
academics to industry. Today, because of Bernt's vision, willingness
to try something new, and capability for understanding the
needs of students, our project design course serves as a College
and national model for senior design experiences.
In October 1973, Bernt received the Distinguished Alumnus
Award from the UIUC Civil Engineering Department, in recognition
of his contributions to engineering education and to the profession,
and “especially (for) his implementation of outstanding student
team project courses.”
Professor Larson was an inspiring leader for both faculty
and students in his pursuit of excellence in engineering design
education. He was a leader in the field from 1959, when the
first committee was organized to develop the sequence of integrated
design courses, until his retirement in 1974.
The Bernt O. Larson Award Fund was established at the U of
I Foundation of General Engineering honoring Professor Larson
for his nearly 37 years of service to the University of Illinois.
The
awards were first presented in May, 1993, at the General Engineering
Department's 22nd Annual Design Symposium.
Others
later increased the fund by contributions, which may be continued
by sending checks payable to "U of I Foundation/Bernt
O. Larson Award Fund", 224 Harker Hall, 1305 W. Green
St., Urbana, IL. 61801 or by contacting the Department of
General Engineering.
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