A team of six UALR civil and construction engineering students, five industry sponsors, and two faculty members has won a national award for a senior design project submitted for the American Red Cross of Greater Arkansas.

The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)
award comes with a $7,500 gift to the UALR Department of Construction Management and Civil and Construction Engineering.

To complete the project, the UALR students worked with licensed professional engineers from an architectural and engineering design firm, a construction firm, and two faculty members who are licensed professional engineers.

The UALR students contributing to the project included Sarah Brown, Joshua Hendricks, Angela Matika, Whitney Montague, Esteban Rodriguez, and Essie Whitmore. Their faculty advisors were Drs. Hollis Bray and Nickolas Jovanovic.

The industry sponsors included Joe Hilliard, Mike Callahan, Paul Timko, and Larry Newkirk, all of Cromwell Architects Engineers, and Jeff Borgsmiller of CDI Contractors.

The project, “Seismic Retrofit Feasibility Study for the American Red Cross of Greater Arkansas,” examined the effect of seismic forces on the American Red Cross facility in Little Rock. It identified a cost-effective approach to strengthen the structural framework of the facility to minimize operational disruptions in the event of an earthquake.

Little Rock is near the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the most seismically active area of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. Disaster relief efforts by, and blood products from, the Red Cross facility in Little Rock could be disrupted if an earthquake occurred, adversely affecting many hospitals and patients in the region.

The NCEES Engineering Award for Connecting Professional Practice and Education was established in 2009 to promote understanding of the value of licensure and to encourage partnerships between the engineering profession and education. NCEES introduced the award to recognize college engineering programs for engaging their students in collaborative projects with licensed professional engineers.

The Civil and Construction Engineering Program is housed within the Department of Construction Management and Civil and Construction Engineering, in the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT) at UALR.

It is the only program in the U.S. that combines civil engineering and construction engineering in a single degree program.

The program was founded in 2010 and is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET. More information about the civil and construction engineering program is available here.