On Friday, May 1, Stevens hosted the annual Innovation Exposition to showcase this year’s Senior Design projects. While this event is usually characterized by seniors placing rows of display tables throughout campus with large crowds browsing their work, this year’s expo was different because of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis: it took place entirely online. However, one thing that stayed the same was the diverse range of ideas and projects among students.
After opening remarks from President Nariman Farvardin and Provost Christophe Pierre at 10 a.m., LIVE presentations took place from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., where participating groups presented their projects over Zoom. Other groups simply provided a project description and poster on the Innovation Expo website. Posters will remain online for several months, so anyone who missed the event can still view students’ work.
All classes and events were moved online just before Spring Break; as a result, seniors had to finish their design projects entirely online. Some groups were able to make the transition relatively easily, but groups that were more dependent on physical prototypes, materials, or spaces had more difficulty. The Stute spoke to a handful of seniors to learn about their work and how they have transitioned into an online environment.
DuJuan Kirk, a Visual Arts and Technology major, focused his project on masculinity and mental health in black men. Kirk’s project was greatly affected by having to transition online. “Masculinity and Mental Health in Black men are topics that are disregarded not only in the black community but also in society due to societal and media influence. Black men are delicate beings, despite what society portrays -thug, aggressive, & emotionless. To demonstrate how beautiful black men are I created a series of portraits of black men. Portraits that tell a story of how Mental Health & Masculinity affects them and their thoughts on its relationship with Black men […] My project was unfortunately affected by classes moving online.”
For Visual Arts and Technology students, senior capstone projects are traditionally displayed in a gallery space. COVID-19 made that impossible to accomplish, as Kirk explains, “This years was going to be at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City. With the cancellation of a physical exhibition, I had to rework the idea of my project to live in a digital space (online). I also was supposed to have 10 portraits for the final product. However, I only got a chance to shoot 5 models so I had to work with what I had. Although, a lot of mishaps have gotten in the way of my vision, I am proud of what I completed.”
Darshan Patel, a Mechanical Engineering major, worked with group members on the SAE Baja Car team — Baja SAE is an annual intercollegiate design competition run by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Teams of students from universities all over the world design and build small off-road cars. The project is usually split into two or more Senior Design teams, with each team taking a different segment of the car. Patel worked on the suspension half with team members Joseph Kaczynski, John Nutaitis, and Peter Trethaway, while the powertrain team was worked on by Andrew Accardi, Kevin Carman Jr., Nicholas O’Friel, and Jason Salazar. Patel expressed that “Moving online changed the entire outlook of the project. Prior to the pandemic we were focused on getting the vehicle ready for the Baja competition, but we’ve shifted our focus to helping out next year’s team in designing a new 4wd system for the car and fixing the parts that failed on our vehicle from the little testing that we were able to do before spring break.”
Matthew Goetz, a Business and Technology major, worked with Alec Caseiro, Charlie Lapolla, Christopher Meehan, and Carl Vasti on the project “U.S. Clean Water.” Goetz explained, “My project is about research into how cities and towns with dual issues of economic and population decline can solve water infrastructure issues. Each municipality faces different issues and needs a custom solution to resolve them. Working online wasn’t a major shift because we didn’t need resources on campus as a lot of phone calls to officials and online research went into the project. We didn’t get a team photo before going online so I had to create a team logo in MS Paint.”
Alexander Murtagh, a Civil Engineering major, worked with his group members on “Jacobs Engineering Route 46 Bridge,” which focused on replacing a traffic bridge in Wayne, New Jersey, crossing the Passaic River. Murtagh expressed that “it was a little weird switching to remote work and not being able to collaborate in person. But we were lucky since we didn’t have a physical prototype to build for our project.” His group members consisted of Alex Reina, Shailja Anjaria, Josh Dayson, and Phil Soltys.
Maryia Spirydonava, also a Civil Engineering major, said her group’s project aimed to rehabilitate Smith Pond. “Smith Pond is a non-tidal, warm, fresh-water pond located in the center of Morgan Days Park in the Village of Rockville Centre, New York. The Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery (GOSR) has targeted Smith Pond as a multi-disciplinary resiliency site for improvements in drainage, flooding, water quality, and ecological habitat. Which is due to its location within the Mill River watershed and is currently being rehabilitated as part of a larger program, Living with the Bay. Working with a given budget of $5.5 million, the project aimed to foster the resilience of Smith Pond within Morgan Days Park for the 100-year storm flooding level.”
The team’s design solution included “two vinyl flood walls connected by a pressure-operated flood gate, a porous pavement parking lot, a porous pavement walkway & an outlook to connect park goers to nature, the removal of invasive species, the planting of native wetland species, and the inclusion of a fish ladder to promote natural fish migration patterns in the waterway,” as described by Spirydonava. The design allows for mitigation of flooding and increased health of the ecosystem. Additionally, Spirydonava explained how moving online affected her teamwork, saying, “It was different working as a team, definitely a lot more zoom meetings. We went from working together in ABS to being on zoom calls while we worked. It was annoying to sometimes show each other things, instead of going over to someone and pointing. But we made it work and prepared us for future work projects where we could be working in remote teams.”
There were more Senior Design projects than what was detailed in this article; visit the Innovation Expo website to check them all out.
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