Drury Wins Second Place in Statewide Engineering Competition
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Tom Misiewicz, Construction Career Day coordinator of Western Massachusetts, traveled from Springfield to North Adams on May 28 to present to 12 students from Drury High School the second place award for the Engineering Design Competition.
This is the second year in a row students from Drury High School won second place in the state. A plaque and a book on civil engineering were presented to the students.
Massachusetts Construction Career Day offers three competitions and is hosted by the New England Laborers’ Training Center in Hopkinton. Drury students competed against approximately 1,237 students from 130 different Massachusetts high schools with half the students coming on the first day and eastern Massachusetts students coming the next day.
The students were from Keith Davis’s CAD Design and Construction class as well as the Engineering the Future classes taught by Davis and Paul Allen. First place in the Engineering Challenge was won by East Hampton High School.
In the competition, students had to design and build working electrical control circuits, build a Cable Stayed bridge, estimate sizes from thousands of an inch to hundreds of feet, and design a cost efficient bridge. Students also identified water turbidity, PH and temperature contamination, and built a projectile launcher to hit a nine square inch target three meters away.
In addition to the competition, students met with community and state workers involved with all aspects of linear construction including the many facets of civil engineering. Students had the opportunity to learn first-hand about the various careers and operate equipment from welding torches, back hoes and excavators to hammers and glass cutters.
The winning team consisted of Jose’ Alicea, Alex Candiloro, Adam Daub, Devin Durant, Luke Grant, Aaron Miller, Josh Perras, Sutye Vilayvanh, Kyle McClendon, Jesse Rondeau, Austin Hebel and Joe Moulton.
“This is by far the best hands on experience I have had so far in high school,” Grant said.
Participation in this event is supported locally by the CVTE Linkage Initiative at Berkshire Community College as well as bus transportation provided by the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board. For more information, visit: www.engineers.org/massccd.