October 25, 2003 - PSPE



THE COMPASS

Volume 48. Number 3 May 2014

(Read the COMPASS online at valleyforge)

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President’s Message

By: Michael Fischer, P.E.

The end of the Chapter year is approaching at we have finally escaped that dreary, snow-filled winter. The Chapter has been busy with many of its annual events and volunteer work. The local competition for the biggest event that PSPE participates in as a society—MATHCOUNTS—was hosted in early February at William Tennent High School along with the Bucks Chapter. Year after year many members of the Valley Forge and Bucks Chapters dedicate countless hours to ensure that this educational program goes off without a hitch. Two other events that VFC members volunteered at recently were the Montgomery County and the Delaware Valley Science Fairs. Members participated as judges for the fairs and awarded prizes to the students deemed to have completed the best projects. The Valley Forge scholarship committee recently completed reviewing applications for the awards for this year. The chapter awards three scholarships to prospective engineering students from Montgomery County high schools who will attend Drexel or Temple. The universities in turn provide larger scholarships to these students on an annual basis. It is a great program that benefits local students and helps promote the pursuit of an engineering degree.

In May, we will host our annual awards dinner for our scholarship, MATHCOUNTS, and science fair winners. We also have our annual golf outing scheduled for the last Friday of the month, which helps fund our scholarship and MATCHOUNTS programs.

Upcoming Events

(visit valleyforge for more details)

May 21: VFC Awards Dinner, 6:00 PM @ Pizza Time Saloon, West Point, PA

May 30: VFC/Reading Golf Outing, Hickory Valley Golf Club

PSPE Legislative Activity: Hearing Held on School Construction Funding

While much has been publicized regarding state budget cuts and the need to create a new formula for basic education funding, cuts to school construction funding have received far less attention. On March 31st, the school construction issue had its day in the sun as the House Education committee held a public hearing on what is referred to as PlanCon. PlanCon, which stands for Planning and Construction Workbook, is a long standing program under which the state has reimbursed school districts for a portion of their construction costs provided that they comply with the multi-stepped process required by the Department of Education. The Commonwealth’s annual appropriation for the reimbursements is roughly $300 million. There are many projects requesting the money and the phased process results in a waiting line of sorts. In any given year, the projects that receive reimbursement have been in the waiting line for years.

The Corbett administration is no fan of the PlanCon process. In fact over the past few years, the Department of Education has advocated for a moratorium on new PlanCon project applications. As a result, any school district that didn’t have an application submitted by October 1, 2012 cannot receive PlanCon funding. The state has continued the $300 million appropriation but that money goes to districts that had their applications submitted prior to that date. Obviously, the program will eventually cease to exist if the moratorium isn’t lifted.

Representative Seth Grove has introduced legislation, House Bill 2124, that makes changes to the whole process, lifts the moratorium and changes the program name to ArCon (Accountability and Reducing Costs in Construction Process). The public hearing drew testifiers from school districts, design professionals, contractors and the Department of Education.

The committee Chair, Representative Paul Clymer indicated that the legislation will be considered at a voting meeting of the committee at some point soon.

For further PSPE legislative updates, visit:



|TURN BACK THE CLOCK…2004 |

|The following article was published in February 2004. Do engineering salaries still top the list for college grads? |

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|NEW YORK (CNN/Money) � The job market may not be booming. But for many in the college class of 2004, it won't be quite as |

|dismal as it was for last year's grads. |

|That's the preliminary conclusion of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which released its latest |

|quarterly starting-salary survey on Thursday. |

|It's still early days for most college seniors on the hunt for a job. Only a small number of students typically have |

|full-time job offers in hand halfway through their senior year. And the number of offers covered in NACE's winter survey is a|

|small percentage of the offers covered in its fall survey, which reflects hiring through the previous August. |

|Still, NACE thinks there's reason for cautious optimism. |

|On balance, employers said they expect college-grad hires to be up 12.7 percent from last year, which is the first hiring |

|increase in two years, said NACE spokesperson Camille Luckenbaugh. |

|Based on the 2,300 offers covered in the current survey, more disciplines were reporting increases in starting salaries. Only|

|a third of disciplines are seeing starting salaries drop, compared |

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|with nearly half at the same time last year. |

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|Major dollars |

|Majors in computer engineering and chemical engineering top the list of most lucrative college degrees. Average starting |

|salaries for computer engineers reached $53,117, up very slightly from their levels at this time last year. Starting salaries|

|for chemical engineers, meanwhile, rose 2.5 percent to $52,563. |

|Starting salaries for those who major in civil engineering and electrical engineering still compare favorably with those of |

|most other majors, but both experienced modest declines compared with last year. |

|For the first time since 2001, employers reported increases in starting salary offers to students in computer science, |

|information sciences and systems, and management information systems. |

|The average offer for computer science majors rose 8.9 percent to $48,656; and more than half the offers surveyed topped |

|$50,000. |

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|Information sciences grads had an average starting salary of $42,108, up 2.6 percent from last year, while management |

|information systems grads have seen starting salaries average $41,103, up a modest 1.3 percent. |

Delaware Valley Science Fairs 2014

By: Tony Dougherty, P.E. – Chapter Director

Well members, once again a few of your representatives on the board reported to the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks to judge the Delaware Valley Science Fair. This year’s fair was held on April 2, 2014 and had 1,032 projects with 1118 students involving 354 teachers in 236 schools. Our chapter judges were a part of a total of 385 judges who conferred over 1000 awards worth approximately $3 million. 

As always these kids amazed our judges with a wide range of projects demonstrating future promise in the field of engineering. The judges from the chapter included Randy Cleaver, Tony Dougherty, Jim Thompson, and Mike Fischer and we evaluated a total of 73 projects in the Engineering Category. As in years past, the event consists of 5 fairs spanning the grade levels, 12th, 11th, 10th, 9th, and one fair for grades 6th through 8th. Each fair (grade level) was reviewed separately and the winner in each grade level received the Valley Forge Chapter award for engineering achievement. In addition, a second place prize for was awarded. The winners of these awards are as follows:

|Fair |Prize |Project |Student |

|12th Grade |1st |Effects of Corrosion on Adhesive Properties of |Leah Goldsberry – Tom’s River, NJ |

| | |All-Weather Fasteners | |

| |2nd |An Analysis of Industrial Hemp as a Candidate for |Meredith Barr – Glenside, PA |

| | |In-Situ Transesterification | |

|11th Grade |1st |Optimization of the Energy Return on Investment for the|Kelly Gresh – New Hope, PA |

| | |Bb Derived Hydrocarbon Oil | |

| |2nd |Analyzing Low-Cost Driver Distraction Devices |James Tralie – Fort Washington, PA |

|10th Grade |1st |A PEEK into the Future: Advanced Materials for |Ralph Lawton – Avondale, PA |

| | |Orthopedic Implants | |

| |2nd |How to make a Human Animatronic Robotic Hand |Vasilios Nicholas- Holmdel, NJ |

|9th Grade |1st |Truss Bridge Angle Size |GianCarlo Seixas – Bethlehem, PA |

| |2nd |Solar Panels = Free Energy |Christian Filemyr – Philadelphia, PA |

|6th-8th Grade |1st |Passive Solar Convective Heating: Opening a Door to |Kyle Sikkema-Millstone, NJ |

| | |New Heating Applications | |

| |2nd |Power Plants: Comparative Analysis of ReDox |Indigo Acosta-Mt. Laurel, NJ |

| | |Electro/Thermal Conductivity in Common Weeds | |

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners. Let’s all hope that these promising young students continue to pursue engineering as their interest, career choice, and/or area of study. It is interesting to note that our winner of the 11th grade fair is actually the older sister of our winner from last year’s 6th-8th Grade Fair, proving that engineering acumen can run in the family! These winners will be invited to our next membership meeting to show off their project. If anyone is interested in judging next year, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Valley Forge / Bucks Chapter 2014 MATHCOUNTS Competitions

By: Daniel Humes, P.E., VFC MATHCOUNTS Co-Coordinator

The Valley Forge Chapter and Bucks County Chapter MATHCOUNTS Competition was held on February 15, 2014. Countless volunteers braved the early hours of Saturday morning to help set up, register schools and grade exams. The countdown round crew once again provided a well run afternoon program.

The Valley Forge and Bucks County Chapters hosted a total of 40 schools at this year’s competition. A total of 271 students (108 from Bucks and 163 from VFC) participated in the regional competitions. Once again the competition was fierce but Wissahickon Middle School was triumphant on the Valley Forge competition and Newtown Middle School was triumphant on the Bucks Chapter competition.

The Wissahickon team members, Steven Qiang, Evan Qiang, Nathan Leung and Jason Shu along with Kiran Rebholz from the Shipley School and Audrey Weidner from Pennfield Middle School continued on to the State MATHCOUNTS Competition with their coach Troy Deckebach. The Newtown Middle School team members, Rishi Mago, David Yang, Andrew Xie and Margaret Zheng along with Adam Davis and Jason Friedman from the Charles Boehm Middle School continued to the State MATHCOUNTS Competition with their coach Matt Gibson.

Valley Forge and Bucks County Chapters are very proud of the accomplishments of these students and their coaches.

We would like to thank our volunteers and our sponsors from this years competition, without their donations and involvement, this competition would not be feasible. Our hope is to continue this wonderful program for many years to come. If you have any interest in becoming involved with the MATHCOUNTS program, please feel free to contact us at vfcmathcounts@ or bucksmathcounts@.

2013-14 CHAPTER OFFICERS & BOARD OF DIRECTORS

President Michael Fischer, P.E. Chapter Director Tony Dougherty, P.E.

President-Elect Dan Humes, P.E. Chapter Director Chad Camburn, P.E.

Vice President Bruce Rhoades, P.E. Chapter Director Kurt Leininger, P.E.

Treasurer Jim Thompson, P.E. Chapter Director Phil Gonski, P.E.

Secretary Lindsay Musselman, E.I.T. Chapter Director Nate Zipay, E.I.T.

Past-President Randy Cleaver, P.E.

State Director Paul Dugan, P.E.

Committees

Committee Primary Secondary

Audit: Kurt Leininger Dan Humes

Awards: Bruce Rhoades Tony Dougherty

By-Laws: Nate Zipay Paul Dugan

Engineers Week: Tony Dougherty Randy Cleaver

Ethics: Michael Fischer Bruce Rhoades

Legislative/Gov’t: Paul Dugan Chad Camburn

Mathcounts: Lindsay Musselman Dan Humes

Membership: Lindsay Musselman Jim Thompson

Nominating: Randy Cleaver (Chair), Dan Humes Chad Camburn

Programs: Bruce Rhoades Michael Fischer

Publications: Michael Fischer Dan Humes

Scholarship: Chad Camburn Nate Zipay

Science Fair: Tony Dougherty Jim Thompson

Web Site: Mike Fischer Phil Gonski

Practice Division Primary

PEPP (Private Practice) Paul Dugan

PEC (Construction) Tony Dougherty

PEG (Government) Paul Dugan

PEI (Industry) Lindsay Musselman

PEE(Education) Bruce Rhoades

You can now follow our Chapter on LinkedIn and Facebook. Check us out!!

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THANK YOU TO OUR ADVERTISERS!

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Photo Courtesy of Anthony Dougherty

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