Calvin Senior Engineers to Showcase Projects

April 29, 2008 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Senior engineering students at Calvin College will showcase the
results of year-long projects on Saturday, May 3 as part of the annual Senior
Projects Night. Included will be everything from a cutting-edge electronic
stethoscope to a hovercraft! Students will be available that day for
interviews or this week as they prep for the project showcase.

Full story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2007-08/senior-engineering-design.htm

As Calvin's graduating student engineers gear up for their annual Senior
Projects Night, they're putting in a lot of hours in the college's Engineering
Building.

"The number of pizza boxes increases exponentially," commented David Wunder, a
Calvin engineering professor and senior projects coordinator. "They're there
all hours -- and the level of excitement also increases exponentially."

The 24th-annual event, a showcase of design projects by Calvin College
graduating student engineers, takes place Saturday, May 3, 2008, including an
open house, where family, friends, faculty and other well-wishers can tour
(with punch in hand) the senior design projects on display in both wings of the
college's Engineering Building.

The evening highlights the projects it has taken senior engineering teams an
entire academic year to produce.

The teams -- comprised of student engineers from the electrical, civil and
environmental, electrical and computer, mechanical and chemical concentrations
-- form early in fall semester and conceive a project to address specific
engineering challenge. By spring, the teams have moved their concept from the
feasibility stage to a working prototype.

This year’s 16 projects include everything from a hovercraft to improved
drinking and wastewater treatment facilities for an Ecuadoran village to an
electronic stethoscope.

The team producing the stethoscope -- dubbed Rhythm Reloaded and composed of
electrical and computer engineers Nate Brinks, Andy Gabler, Ben Moes and David
van Geest -- is building a prototype that is a significant innovation on
existing electronic models.

"What a lot of existing electronic stethoscopes do is give the look and feel
of the traditional models," said Gabler. "We've broken away from that."

The Rhythm Reloaded stethoscope, consisting of a wireless chest piece, USB
output and headphones, will record and store sounds from a patient’s body in
high-quality audio files that are transferable to a computer. The stethoscope
will allow a doctors and nurses to e-mail their patients' heart body sounds to
specialists. The new equipment would also allow health professionals to archive
readings from a patient, allowing them to track the change in body sounds over
time.

Whatever the focus of a senior design project, industry,
third-world-development or civic improvement, each is considered a "kingdom"
project, said Wunder.

"We're preparing our engineers for a lifetime of kingdom service. It doesn't
matter whether they're headed for an office in Chicago or a village in
Madagascar. If we're responding to God's call on our lives, then what we do as
engineers has that kind of value and meaning."

Last year better than 90-percent of the students who graduated from the
engineering program landed jobs upon graduation.

“Our engineers tend to do well, whether it's grad school or a first job,"
said Wunder. "But we're excited for our grads once they're well into their
careers because that's when their talent, education, and experience really
coalesce. Calvin College prepares engineers for a lifetime of service-it's over
their entire careers that we see Calvin engineers truly shine."

-end-
Received on Tue Apr 29 10:21:17 2008