Five senior civil engineering students at Slippery Rock University are making tangible change in the community through their capstone project. They are creating a plan to revitalize and improve the accessibility of Misty Hollow Residency, an outdoor space near Ellport for eco-centric artists and scientists to engage the public with their projects.
Under the mentorship of Robabeh Jazaei, SRU associate professor of engineering and civil engineering program lead, the following senior civil engineering students are part of a team named NOVA Engineering:
- Javier Dos Santos from Willemstad, Curaçao.
- Hunter Viscuso from Rochester.
- Alice Bogia from Fleetwood (Oley Valley HS).
- Taha Ramahi from Orland Park, Illinois (McDowell HS).
- Carter Slipko from Beaver (Beaver HS).
These students are collaborating with Misty Hollow’s founder Asia Ward to expand the offerings at the residency.
Ward initially approached the team with requests for improvements for the driveway to the facilities, as well as plans for a cabin intended for maple syrup extraction. As the team pursued responses to Ward’s requests and solutions to her problems, they also completed a visit to the project site. Dos Santos, who served as project manager, highlighted the choices that the team made after seeing the site for themselves.
“When we went to the site, we saw that the road had a lot of sharp curves, so we had to propose ways to rebuild it to make it more accessible and safer for the artists who visit,” Dos Santos said.
Had the project note included contact with a real client or the implementation of practices used by professional civil engineers, the team wouldn’t have been able to respond as effectively as they did to their client’s needs.
The team’s solution was to create a new driveway to access the facility, as well as the placement of solar panels to utilize a natural, eco-friendly power source for the maple harvesting cabin.
“There was a lot of tree cover around the cabin, so we found an open meadow and were able to put the solar panels there,” said Bogia.
Even though their exact plan of attaching the panels directly to the structure wasn’t feasible, the team responded by being resilient and adapting to the constraints of the site, a skill that is important for professional civil engineers.
“While we were designing the projects for the property, there were a lot of ecological boundaries that we couldn’t cross,” explained Viscuso. “We were able to implement different designs that worked around these boundaries to preserve the natural beauty of the site.”
The team also spoke to the experiences in their classes at SRU that helped them to complete the project.
“Our surveying class was really beneficial for this project,” said Ramahi. “But we also used things that we learned in transportation engineering, geotechnical engineering, water resources engineering, and structural engineering courses.”
In addition to the courses that Ramahi mentioned, several of the group members said that the concrete design class they’re currently in was helpful as they’ve worked on their capstone. The group heavily credited and thanked Jazaei as well for being supportive throughout the class and their time at SRU.
While their time at SRU and their capstone are not over yet, they have made significant contributions to Misty Hollow thanks to the empowering, experiential education they’ve received at SRU.
As these students begin to look forward to their own professional careers in civil engineering, they can be confident that accomplishments like their capstone are sure to make them competitive leaders in their field.
More information about Misty Hollows is available online. More information about civil engineering at SRU is available on the program’s webpage.
