Sweet Briar College’s third annual Cardboard Boat Regatta has a couple of new twists for 2006. This year, in addition to SBC students, seventh- and eight-graders from Monelison Middle School’s Destination Imagination team will man one of seven boats to splash onto the course.

The College also recruited local television personality Tab O’Neal of WSET 13 in Lynchburg to call the race. The starting gun will sound at 12:45 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23 at the Lower Lake during SBC homecoming weekend festivities.

Christina Johnson works on construction of the USS Happens for the 2006 Cardboard Boat Regatta. More photosThe competition is fast becoming a favorite SBC tradition, thanks to the high drama and white-knuckled tension of the two-person teams bobbing and weaving – and, it must be said, sometimes sinking – to the finish line in their ungainly but game heavy-duty paper tubs.

It’s a loud, crowd-pleasing event.

Students in Sweet Briar’s introduction to engineering design course design, test and build the boats, using only corrugated cardboard and 50 feet of duct tape. Including the paddles, the watercraft cannot not exceed 20 pounds and must be buoyant enough and fleet enough to carry two people while negotiating a course in a timed race.

Winners are announced in categories of design, speed and buoyancy.

The design teams are made up of both engineering majors and non-majors – the introductory engineering design course is open to all SBC students, in case philosophy or English majors hanker to know why boats float or how to build a toaster.

In another change for this year’s race, a team of students from SBC’s environmental studies program also will compete. They aren’t responsible for design, but will help construct the boat. Recruiting students from outside the introductory design course expands the overall field of competition on race day.

The Monelison team, made up of eighth-grader Jodee Harris and seventh-graders Conner Peters, Ashley Wayne and Steven Woerner, attended a lecture by engineering program assistant professor Dorsa Sanadgol on buoyancy analysis and how to calculate how far a boat will sink before it floats.

The middle-schoolers also tested their first model of the MMS Titanic and learned their calculations needed some refinement. The Titanic sank at the dock under the weight of its two crewmen.

Sanadgol is teaching the intro design course and overseeing the regatta this year, which was originally developed by the program’s former director, Kurt Schulz. As a teaching tool, Sanadgol calls the project “awesome.”

“[It] includes everything that goes into the design process,” she said, and approximates a “real-world problem that they would encounter in industry.”

Working in teams, students identify the problem, brainstorm ideas, and cull the ideas based on the project’s constraints, such as allowable materials and weight restrictions. They conduct buoyancy analysis on the most promising concepts, which determines the final design to be proposed.

Each team writes a formal proposal on their design idea before they move on to building a scale model that can be tested. Next is the redesign – often radical – resulting from the performance of the scale models in testing. Finally, they construct the real thing.

The exercise also teaches a skill that is crucial in the industries the women will work in one day. “It’s not just about building a boat,” Sanadgol says. “It’s teamwork and group dynamics and how to effectively work in groups.”

Sweet Briar’s engineering program is one of only two degree-granting engineering programs at women’s colleges in the country. In addition to a B.S. in engineering science or B.A. in integrated engineering and management, the College offers five-year dual degree options that allow students to graduate from Sweet Briar with a B.S. plus a second bachelor’s or a master’s from a partner institution in a specific engineering discipline.

SBC partners include Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis and Columbia University.

Students also may minor in engineering, allowing them to mix engineering with a personally crafted degree program that could include majors in fields such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, environmental science or business.

For more information, please visit the SBC engineering program Web site.

– By Jennifer McManamay, SBC staff writer
Erica Franklin installs a structural support inside one of the Pirates of Sweet Briar’s “pontoons.” She and teammate Anita Masson are going for an innovative, never-been-tried raft design. Margaret Melchor (left) and Maxine Emerich discuss how their paddle design might work in practice.