Bill Lamp

Donor hopes expo sparks interest in engineering

Bill Lamp, president of Engineers Plus, a Richmond, Va.-based design firm, has been a supporter of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering since 1998, when he and several of his partners were on the engineering team that designed the school’s West Hall and the Virginia Microelectronics Center.

Since then, Lamp, a Virginia Tech graduate and an electrical engineer, has made a personal connection with the school and its students. For the past two years, he has directed his annual gifts to the school for support of the Senior Design Expo. This spring he served as a competition judge.

“Each year, I look forward to seeing the prototypes and listening to the student presentations. Many offer new perspectives and thinking, a few are award-winning, but all highlight the talent, energy and potential that new engineers bring to the diverse world of problem solving,” Lamp said.

At the 2009 expo in April, 133 students in 37 groups showcased in-depth design projects ranging from a hovercraft to a home-security system. Participation is a graduation requirement, and students work with faculty advisers, who guide them in applying their knowledge to real-life problems, sometimes solving challenges posed by local companies.

For the first time, Richmond-area middle and high school students came to campus for a preview of the expo. More than 150 students and educators attended the preview, which was designed to generate an interest in engineering.

“Attending the VCU Senior Design Expo was a perfect capstone to our year. It provided my students with an opportunity to connect their own learning of engineering principles and technologies to real-life applications that were on a scale much larger than I am sure they imagined prior to attending this event,” said Andrei Dacko, who teaches the Engineering Technology Program at Hopewell High School. “Perhaps the best thing about this event for my students was leaving amped and charged up about the mind-blowing possibilities that an engineering education can unleash.”

One group of School of Engineering students created a system to minimize waste and maximize efficiency of a mineral oil recovery process used by Honeywell Corp. in its manufacturing process. This team was one of several that aimed for environmentally friendly projects.

Group member Michael Burt (B.S. ’09) said new engineering graduates need to be as environmentally conscious as possible. “Businesses want to be able to say, ‘We’ve done this to make our product more environmentally friendly,’ so it’s important for us to be able to do that,” he said.

Likewise, the expo gives students a chance to show the results of their capstone engineering experience, said assistant professor Frank Gulla, who teaches the “Senior Design Studio” course.

“Our hope is that the expo sparks an interest in engineering and technology among young and old,” Gulla said.
Lamp thinks that the current shortage of engineers needs to be addressed early in the educational process by encouraging problem-solving skills. “This is a day when the student teams step into the real world of engineering,” he said. “But they also are ambassadors to the next generation, with the expo serving as a wonderful forum for raising awareness of engineering, science and technology, which benefits us all.”

To make a gift to the School of Engineering, contact Brian S. Thomas, vice president of the School of Engineering Foundation, at (804) 828-0067 or bsthomas@vcu.edu.