SOE students collaborate and innovate on their way to second place showing at Canadian Engineering Competition
A team of four second-year engineering students from UBC Okanagan (UBCO)’s School of Engineering cruised to a second-place finish at the 40th annual Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC) in Calgary.
CEC brings together more than 200 engineering undergraduate students from across the nation to compete against each other in eight categories (Junior Design, Senior Design, Innovative Design, Engineering Consulting, Parliamentary Debate, Re-engineering, Programming, and Engineering Communication).
The UBC SOE Jr. Design team included:
Sam Bachnak – 2nd year Mechanical Engineering
Shaleena Egdell – 2nd year Civil engineering
Elliott Friedland – 2nd year Mechanical Engineering
David Manhart – 2nd Year Electrical Engineering
The team earned their berth at nationals in the Junior Design catory on the strength of showings at Western Canada and local competitions earlier this year.
At CEC, the team was given a real-world challenge to solve and only eight hours to design, create, and test a physical prototype of their proposed solution within time and budget constraints.
The challenge: design and construct a hydraulic arm that can perform a mock surgery (in this case: removing objects hidden behind obstacles from within a box roughly the size of a human body).
“Working well together as a team was critical,” explains UBCO Electrical Engineering student David Manhart. “We collaborated and problem solved really well as a group, which allowed us to work quickly and effectively. It was a great experience getting to work together as a team under high pressure and time constraints – that experience taught us a lot and we’re proud of the solutions we came up with together as a group.”
Given the strength of the competition they were up against—seven other teams from leading engineering schools across Canada)—the team was elated when the results came in, notes Manhart.
“There was a rush of adrenaline and joy to achieve second place among all these very capable teams,” says Manhart. “Overall, the competition was a great way to apply what we’ve learned in our program at UBCO, to connect with other engineering students from around the country and to see the solutions they came up with.”
The team has reflected on how this competition result is the culmination of months of hard work and growth:
“From our first competition to our last, the team experienced tremendous growth, both individually and collectively. Each competition served as a learning opportunity, allowing us to strengthen our skills, build upon our teamwork abilities, and innovate on our approach.
“As a team, we grew so much, learning from each competition and improving further with each step of our journey,” said student Shaleena Egdell.
Inspired and informed by their success at CEC, the team plans to compete again next year in the Senior Design category.
“On behalf of everyone at the School of Engineering, our congratulations go to this outstanding team of students. You should be very proud of your accomplishments and the way in which you represented yourselves and the SOE, as we are certainly proud and inspired by your efforts. This result is an example of the many ways in which UBC Okanagan Engineering students rise to the challenge to come up with innovative solutions to real-world problems,” says Professor Will Hughes, Director of the School of Engineering at UBC Okanagan.
More information about the UBCO School of Engineering is available at https://engineering.ok.ubc.ca/.