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Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology senior civil engineering
major Rachel Howser has won the American Society of Civil Engineers'
National Daniel W. Mead Student Essay Contest on professional ethics. Her
article on "Eminent Domain and the Engineer's Ethical
Responsibilities" will be published in a future issue of
ASCE's Civil Engineering magazine.
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Presenting Award: Matthew
Trowbridge, president of Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology's Cecil T. Lobo American Society of Civil
Engineers student chapter, proudly presents the Mead
Essay Contest award to Rachel Howser, a senior civil
engineering major and ASCE chapter officer. |
A native of Scottsburg, Ind., Howser is secretary of
Rose-Hulman's Cecil Lobo student ASCE chapter and has earned engineering
experience as an intern with Hannum, Wagle & Cline Engineering. She is
also involved in the college's Student Government Association,
cheerleading team, drama club, The Thorn student newspaper and craft
club, and serves as a tutor for the Homework Hotline toll-free telephone
tutoring service for Indiana middle school and high school students. This
summer, as a National Science Foundation Scholar, Howser
helped with
an earthquake concrete research project at the University of
Houston, including 10 students from universities throughout
the United States. She came up with equations that
describe the behavior of reinforced concrete under seismic
loads.
Howser's research gave her an opportunity to work with a
15-foot tall, 40-ton, $1 million concrete cracker known as
the universal element tester.
Howser has been invited to discuss her research at two
civil engineering conferences, one in Vancouver, Canada; will
have aspects of her research published in an international
structures journal; and has been asked to work with the same
University of Houston group next summer at the National
Earthquake Center in Taiwan. The Daniel W. Mead Student Essay Contest was established and
endowed in 1939 by Daniel W. Mead, a former ASCE president. The
specific topic of the essay contest is selected each year by ASCE's
Committee on Student Activities, which selects the national winner from
four district nominees and an international candidate. Student and chapter accomplishments have helped Rose-Hulman's
ASCE student chapter receive the Robert Ridgway Award as the nation's
top chapter award twice during the past three years.
A news story by Houston television station, KPRC-TV, that
interviewed Howser about the earthquake concrete research
project can be viewed at
http://www.click2houston.com/video/13739533/index.html
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