Contact: Patti Klein Lerner,
(818) 677-2130

CSUN Bridge Builders Take The Prize

Six CSUN civil engineering students will compete against more than 250 students from 40 universities in the National Steel Bridges Competition May 20-21 at Texas A&M University.

CSUN's team won the right to compete in the national contest by placing second in regional competition in Tucson, Arizona, earlier this month. CSUN faced teams from 17 universities, including the University of Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA, USC, UC San Diego, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Los Angeles, Cal State Long Beach, the University of Hawaii, Loyola Marymount and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Dr. Ed Larson, the retired CSUN faculty member and part-time instructor who volunteered to help with the competition, said he was "ecstatic," when the CSUN students took the prize. "I jumped like the rest of the kids. It's the first time we've done this well and I'm real proud of them."

Members of the CSUN team are James B. Bobo of Canyon Country; Raymond P. Carroll of Sunland; Scott R. Giannini of Sylmar; Jerry M. Lebeck, of North Hills; Norman D. Raymundo of Valencia and Victoria A. Stone of Northridge. All are student members of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which sponsors the contests.

The CSUN students won a competition in which tool-wielding students are timed with a stopwatch to see who can build the fastest 22-foot-long steel bridge over a 14-foot wide imaginary river using no single piece larger than 4 feet.

"We took the shortest time to construct the bridge. It took us 4 minutes and 50 seconds. I was nervous as could be," Larson said.

The CSUN bridge was "pretty unique," Giannini said. "It didn't look much like the other bridges. What made it so fast was the unique design. Most people went with a truss design and we went with a beam design."

The CSUN students brought the parts for their bridge to the contest in the back of a truck. After the contest, the CSUN team removed the bridge's legs and drove it back to CSUN, where it was reassembled and put on display in the Engineering Building, located near the center of campus. The bridge will probably be dismantled and shipped in pieces to College Station, Texas, for the national competition, Larson said.

The CSUN team of 20 students placed third in the conference, but placed first in the bridge-building portion of the competition. The top two teams from 20 regional conferences will face off in the national competition.

For more information, call Larson at (818) 677-5827 or (818) 677-2166.