Shaping Tomorrow's Civil Engineers
Concrete Canoe Veteran Jennifer Prichard Becomes Reality TV Show StarThinking outside the box was an important skill for civil engineer Jennifer Prichard when it came time for her brush with stardom on the Discovery Channel Show Super Weapons of the Ancient World. A documentary challenging a team of engineers, architects, blacksmiths and carpenters to build a weapon used in ancient warfare, the show took Prichard and her team to the wilds of Morocco to construct a Roman siege tower. These towers were used like primitive forms of tanks, functioning as mobile fortifications for soldiers to breech enemy walls.
The tower that Prichard's team constructed for Super Weapons was built to the exact specifications of the ancient design. The structure was forty feet tall, weighed eight tons, and could be moved by five people or four camels. Prichard, the only engineer on the project with timber experience, handled the important physical aspects of the structure, assuring its durability.
"It was a huge challenge, and I love a challenge," laughed Prichard. "Overall it was really fun, but toward the end you could definitely feel the pressure."
A five-time participant of the ASCE/MBT National Concrete Canoe Competition, Prichard is no stranger to challenges. The competition challenges civil engineering students to work as teams to design and build a canoe from the most unlikely of materials – concrete – and to put their skills to the ultimate test by racing the canoe against other teams.
As an undergraduate civil engineering student at Okalahoma State University, Prichard competed in the Concrete Canoe Competition from her freshmen year through her graduate year. Each year, with her help, Okalahoma State successfully made it to the national competition, placing among the top 10. By her third year as a participant, Prichard was elected the project manager, and delivered the oral presentation, while remaining an active paddler for the races.
Prichard was selected out of 1,200 applicants to star in Super Weapons, scheduled for broadcast in fall 2004. While Prichard believes being a young female with an outgoing and ambitious personality had much to do with her being selected, she has no doubt that her early experiences, like participating in the Concrete Canoe Competition, gave her a leg-up on the competition.
"Concrete Canoe is one of those activities that prepares you for anything by making you think outside the box," Prichard said, looking back on the experience.
In her professional life, Prichard recently began design work on an Air Force base foundation and has also been appointed treasurer of the ASCE Oklahoma branch.
For more information contact Joan Buhrman at 703-295-6406 or 571-213-3812 (cell phone). Information can also be obtained at http://www.asce.org/inside/nccc2004.
Founded in 1852, ASCE represents more than 133,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society. ASCE celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2002.
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