Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
Students in the spring 2009 Design Process class offered at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture used the power of their ideas to take the four top spots at the 2009 Next Great Aggie Innovention Contest, sponsored by the Texas A&M Institute for Applied Creativity and the Creative Innovation Alliance.
“The contest awards the top ideas from Aggie ‘Innoventors’ who craft an idea that, when developed, will solve a problem related to campus life and/ or university attendance,” said Design Process instructor Jorge Vanegas, professor of architecture and interim dean of the college, in his instructions to students entering the contest.
Third-year biomedical engineering major Aubrey Harris won first place honors in the contest with her entry, in which she envisions a high-tech approach for helping students design their degree plans.
“My idea is a software program that uses information that a student or advisor supplies — credits achieved, desired major, work load preferences — and compiles them to generate a unique degree plan for the client,” Harris said in her contest entry
“This program not only generates a plan, but also recommends minors and other degrees that require only a few more courses,” she said. “It can also help students envision how many hours will transfer to another degree, if they want to change majors. It will integrate the course catalog as well as requirements for university honors programs and study abroad requirements.”
Zachary Sunberg, a third-year aerospace engineering major, won second place with his conception of the Vertrack Bicycle Rack, which is designed to store bicycles vertically.
“It will consist of two or more tiers of hanging bikes, one above the other. The upper rows of bikes will be accessed by pulling a moveable part of the rack down to ground level,” he said in his entry.
The system, he said, will not significantly increase the difficulty in retrieving or depositing bikes, will store bikes at more than twice the density of current bike rack systems, and, since it is designed to be placed near a wall, it will also utilize space more efficiently than current bike rack designs.
Luke Withers, a second-year general studies major, won third place in the 2009 Next Great Aggie Innovention Contest with his idea for enhancing the sport of wakeboarding.
His concept, the “Great Grip,” is a wakeboard/water ski handle remote device that will allow a wakeboarder to control variables that affect a ride such as rope length, the amount of water in a rider’s ballast tanks, and wake plate positioning for a more defined wake; a better wake means a better launch, which leads to better tricks while airborne.
“This idea was birthed out of countless hours spent on the boat adjusting rope lengths and adjusting to varying speeds for different riders,” he said in his entry. “The time that can be saved by having the remote ability to adjust all these variables is what inspired this invention,” he said.
Finishing fourth was Maria Benita Menendez-Kuhr, a fourth-year university studies major, who had an idea to help people get thinner.
“Americans are overweight,” she said in her entry. “They want to lose weight and their clothes are too tight and look bad, but when they go shopping for bigger clothes they feel guilty. They need to be able to buy clothes, look and feel good while losing weight.”
.Her idea is a clothing store that gives customers incentives to shed pounds.
“The store will provide one alteration per garment. When the client loses enough weight to move into the next size down, they receive 50-percent off that item when returning it within one year.”
- Posted: May 1, 2009 -
