A group of fourth-year engineering students will get an all-expenses paid trip to New Orleans this fall after taking top honours in a contest that required them to design a new wastewater treatment plan for a rapidly growing region north of Toronto.

Civil and environmental engineering students Shibin Pennickara, Hajjar Al-Hasna Ahmad Rizal, Yanting Liu, and Stephanie Shaw won first place in the Water Environment Association of Ontario student design competition, held April 6 at the London Convention Center.

The students designed a storm water management system for the East Holland River watershed area, which encompasses portions of the towns of Aurora and Newmarket. Besides designing a system to treat the increased amounts of storm water runoff in the area as a result of rapid urbanization, the students also had to discuss innovative methods of mitigating the environmental impact of that increased growth.

Shaw said one of the judges who reviewed their project was an employee at the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority – the organization that manages the watershed – which leant the entire exercise a sense of real-world experience.

“This is what they do,” she said. “So it felt really great to apply everything we’ve learned and present it to people who actually work in the field. They gave us some very good feedback, and we got to meet a lot of new contacts.”

All of the students said they may be interested in working in the field of wastewater and storm water management after graduation.

“If they go into consulting, this would be a really important part of their work,” said Tirupati Bolisetti, one of two professors who helped supervise the students.

The students will take their presentation to the Water Environment Federation conference in New Orleans in October.

“It’s the biggest wastewater conference in the world,” said Rajesh Seth, their other supervisor. “Almost 20,000 people attend, and New Orleans is one of the few places that can accommodate a conference that size.”

The Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association is hosting a community clean-up on Friday, April 25, and is hoping UWindsor volunteers will want to pitch in.

The Rose City Clean Sweep brings together teams to remove litter from sidewalks, school grounds, vacant lots and alleys, says Debi Croucher, the association’s acting director.

“We believe that this is another great opportunity for the University of Windsor to demonstrate pride in our downtown,” she says. “The planned relocation of arts and social work programs to the heart of the city makes this a chance to build partnerships.”

The city government will provide gloves, waste bags and collection services; the business improvement association will serve coffee and doughnuts at the event start and pizza at its conclusion.

The clean-up runs 10 a.m. to noon; staff members interested in participating must seek the permission of their supervisors. To register your interest, e-mail Kevin Johnson in the Office of Public Affairs and Communications.

More than 30 art students from the University of Windsor and McMaster University are exhibiting a series of prints at a local gallery and will hold a public reception on Friday.

Connect is the first collaborative print show between the two schools and includes wide variety of styles, techniques and approaches to printmaking.

The exhibit, on at the Windsor Printermaker’s Forum, opened at the beginning of this month and will run until April 24. The reception will be held on April 18 from 6 to 9 p.m. The gallery is located at 420 Devonshire Road.

Looking for some distraction as the end of semester approaches? The University Bookstore is offering a 25 percent discount on DVDs today—April 15—as its True Savings Tuesday special.

The Bookstore’s Vanier Hall location stocks a variety of titles with something for every taste, from feature dramas and comedies to animation and yes, Ultimate Fighter matches. The store is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.