Student Competitions
Students participate in a variety of competitions and use their engineering skills to solve real-world problems. Projects range from environmental design to creating a steel bridge to designing a formula-style racecar.
UNM Team Wins Second Place at WERC
 A Chemical and Nuclear Engineering team from UNM won second place in the WERC Annual Environmental Design Contest last April. WERC, a consortium for environmental education and technology development, hosts the annual competition for college students from around the world. Participants choose from eight real-world environmental problems and use their engineering skills to solve them. On the UNM team were Michelle Costa, David Gorm, Tricia Padilla, Emily Pincus, and Alicia Sanchez
The UNM team chose Task Five, which focused on removing tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) from a liquid waste collection system. TMAH is a chemical used in lithography, one of the first steps in the semiconductor manufacturing process. Currently, semiconductor plants discharge the chemical into a sanitary sewer. The challenge for WERC competitors was to find a more effective, efficient way to remove TMAH. The UNM team evaluated different water treatment techniques and ran numerous tests before designing a bench scale model that combined reverse osmosis with an ion exchange.
The team's system worked perfectly and they won second place, as well as compliments from competing teams and the judges. "In this competition, students had to grapple with all the constraints that they will experience in their working careers. This gives them a sense of what engineering is like in the real world," says mentor Greg Courtin, a chemical and nuclear engineering research engineer.
UNM Team Places Second in Regional Steel Bridge Contest
 The UNM team placed second in the steel bridge contest at the Rocky Mountain Regional American Society of Civil Engineers Student Conference, held April 1-3, 2005 at Colorado State University. Three hundred students from 13 schools in five states attended the conference.
Held annually, the National Steel Bridge Competition pits teams of young civil engineering students against each other and the clock, as they design and construct a bridge to span a river valley in a mountainous rural region. The competition brings together everything students learn in the classroom - ranging from design, fabrication and construction to fostering a teamwork environment.
For the Steel Bridge Competition, bridge design teams must meet strict guidelines.
Teams are judged on their design, blueprint and oral presentation, as well as construction speed, lightness, aesthetics, stiffness, construction economy, structural efficiency, and performance.
The Formula for Success
 UNM Mechanical Engineering students can enroll in a three-semester, for-credit course culminating in the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) competition, the largest international engineering competition in the world. FSAE challenges engineering students to design, build and race a formula style racecar in one year. This year, the three-day event attracted close to 150 teams, from as far away as Korea, Australia and Finland.
In 1997 FSAE was a club that students could join on their own time. There was enough interest that the School of Engineering offered the competition as a one-semester class in 1999. In 2003, UNM became the only school in the country to offer a three-semester, for-credit FSAE course. The class is an alternative to the required senior design project in Mechanical Engineering.
Students start the course in the spring semester of their junior year. First semester is dedicated to academic study. In the fall, students design and build the car in the fall, and test the car before the competition the following spring. Students learn about racecar engineering, master the software required to design the car, and manufacture all the parts, with the exception of the seatbelt, rims and engine. Then they construct the car, test it and prepare for the competition.
Faculty adviser Professor John Russell says that he and the students have different goals when the class begins, but all goals converge at the finish line. "Their goal is to win the competition. My goal is to give them tools they can use when they graduate. The racecar is just a neat tool to show them project management, systems engineering and working as a team."
Research Opportunities
 Since UNM became a research university almost 20 years ago, research has become an integral part of the School of Engineering undergraduate program. "It's crucial for students to get outside the classroom, to work in teams with engineers and other professionals, and to create new engineering knowledge," says Associate Dean of Research Kevin Malloy. UNM’s proximity to national laboratories offers an unparalleled opportunity for students to participate in world-class research with leading scientists. Our students conduct research at Sandia National Laboratory and the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque; at Los Alamos National Laboratory just two hours away; and at Idaho national Laboratory.
Opportunities vary from capstone projects, including company-sponsored tasks, to honors programs, research assistantships with faculty, to working in many of the School of Engineering labs, including a 10-acre lab in the Bosque.
Facing the Future with Confidence: Capstone projects prepare students to enter the workplace
The long awaited day has finally arrived: graduation! Studying engineering requires years of hard work in rigorous academic programs with lectures and labs, papers and presentations, textbooks and tests. But how prepared are students to enter the job market?
At the UNM School of Engineering, seniors face their final challenge by applying four years of learning to the capstone project. These projects test the students' knowledge, help them tap into their creativity, and polish teamwork skills that will prepare them for the workplace.
Arup Maji, chair of the Civil Engineering Department, says, "The capstone projects boost the confidence of the seniors before they enter the workforce". Geoff Courtin, a chemical and nuclear engineering research engineer commented that, "Students grapple with all the constraints that they will experience in their working careers. This gives them a sense of what engineering is like in the real world."
Projects have far-reaching benefits
Every department has a senior capstone requirement, but the projects vary from company-sponsored tasks to those designed and managed by the School of Engineering professors. Projects have included:
- designing, testing, and building a formula race car, then racing it in an international competition,
- developing a hydroelectric generator that could be hooked to a residential water to generate power and reduce a home's energy bill,
- designing a roundabout to reduce traffic accidents from a tangle of roads intersecting at odd angles at an Albuquerque intersection,
- and finding more efficient ways to remove TMAH, a chemical used in lithography, one of the first steps in semiconductor manufacturing, from a liquid waste collection system.
The capstone projects benefits the companies involved, as well as the students who apply what they have learned to a business setting. Matt Nighbert, an engineer for Gannett Fleming West, an international planning, design, and construction management firm who mentored a group of civil engineering students, summed up the students' experiences with the capstone projects by saying, "They learned how important communication is for an engineer."
UNM School of Engineering Integrates Education and Research
With $29 million in sponsored research, the School has plenty of opportunities for undergraduates to participate outside the classroom. Students can choose from honors programs, research assistantships with faculty, and research collaborations with industry and the government. Three types of research programs are listed below.
NSF-REU (National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates)
The key objective of this program is to expose more undergraduates to research in hopes they will want to pursue research as a career. Terran Lane, assistant professor of computer science, is collaborating with a team at the University of Oklahoma on a NSF-REU to study embedded machine learning. Lane recruited undergraduate students to assist his portion of the study, which focuses on teaching autonomous agents - like robots - to interact with their environments
PREP (Post-baccalaureate Research and Education Program)
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, this program offers recent UNM graduates with bachelor's degrees in science, math, and engineering the opportunity to spend a year working full-time in a research lab before entering graduate school. Students take courses at UNM as well as short courses offered by PREP.
PROFOUND (Program of Research Opportunities for Undergraduates)
This university-wide service connects students with research opportunities on campus throughout the year. During PROFOUND's spring symposium, students present their research for judging and some receive monetary awards for their work.
Honing Their Skills
Student response has been overwhelmingly positive. "I'm learning things that I wouldn't learn in the classroom, so it's been the best of both worlds," commented Marty Ridens, a research assistant who was hired to help Terran Lane on his NSF-REU. Tricia Padilla, who worked in a PREP program and graduated in May with a degree in chemical engineering, adds, "Working with Dr. Lopez and his group allowed me to gain different leadership skills by his example of supervision of people. It was insightful to see how he worked with and managed people"
By exposing students to real world situations involving people, uncertainty and many more factors than simply plugging the right numbers into an equation, students are better equipped to meet the challenges of working in a team environment in the workplace.
Learning from the Land
 The Department of Civil Engineering has a 10-acre patch of the bosque, a Spanish name referring to the Rio Grande River and adjoining cottonwood forest that bisect Albuquerque, that provides volunteers for the city and educational opportunities for students.
Through the decades, urban development, non-native plant growth and river management policies affected the health of the river and the bosque. Now, UNM civil engineering students and faculty are learning from the land and using those lessons to help shape strategies that will restore and protect the river and the bosque for generations to come.
According to Dr. Julie Coonrod, P.E., assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, "The soil class learns about in-situ soil testing, the surveying class provides surveys, the fluid mechanics students measure three-dimensional velocity in the river, and many hydrology students make the site the focus of their class projects. In addition, the site complements the current Rio Grande research in which several of us are involved."
Coonrod and fellow civil engineering professor Dr. John Stormont, P.E., are conducting a number of research studies at the location. Stormont, a geoenvironmental engineer, specializes in the vadose zone, or the unsaturated part of the soil above the water table. He is a co-principal investigator with Coonrod on a research project called The Bosque Soil Evaporation Monitoring and Modeling study.
"Our goal is to take all the data we collect and analyze and make it available to people who are making decisions about restoration strategies for the bosque. But the knowledge we gain will be applicable to many other locations," explains Stormont.
While the department uses the Bosque Lab frequently, they have only just begun to tap the site's potential. Tim Ward, Professor and Department Chair, adds, "Our mission at UNM is to educate students so that they are well-equipped to participate in the world as productive and enlightened individuals. There is no better way to do this than through experiential learning."
What Students Say
Read what UNM Engineering students are saying about their majors, professors, career choices, and more.
 An advantage to the small classes is that I got to know my instructors personally. Not only are they top-notch, they have been encouraging, helpful, and great job references.
Sarah Shannon, Civil Engineering
The Lobo Unmanned Aerial Vehicle project has helped a lot of students get extra experience on the technical side of things. For project coordinators like me, it gave us an idea of what to expect when we get into the workforce and start working in teams.
Michael Anderson, Electrical Engineering
The course work is very interesting, demanding at times but rewarding in the end. As a chemical engineer you have to know all about chemistry, math, but at the same time you have to know how to design a piping system. So it takes all aspects of engineering and puts it together. Also with the many concentrations that are offered through the department you can choose the electives that you are interested in instead of having them assigned to you.
Brittany Branch, Chemical Engineering
I am fascinated by the field of computer vision. In fact, the idea of integrating the 'human computer' with the 'machine computer' in order to facilitate vision in patients suffering from visual impairment is the structural backbone for accomplishing my desire of improving the quality of life for many people. The choice of Electrical Engineering major (with a focus on digital system design) along with a minor in Biology has proven to be my best route in acquiring the knowledge necessary to envision myself as a future researcher/developer in the field Visual Neurophysiology; Hence, following my dreams brought me to the front door of engineering school.
DeMia Fay Tapia, Electrical Engineering
 A lot of weight is placed on research experience, so by winning the Goldwater scholarship I hope to bring well-deserved attention to the quality of research at UNM, including the opportunities for undergraduates to conduct research.
Frank Hemingway, EE major and regent's scholar from Las Cruces, upon receiving the 2005 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship
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