VIDEO: Tug-of-War and Cincinnati-Themed "Jeopardy!" Part of Engineering Week

Hosted by the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science Tribunal, each day of the recent E-Week, or Engineering Week, offered different events and activities, sponsored by many local businesses, as well as student organizations within the college.

Teams from these student organizations participate in these events and compete for points. Whichever team has accumulated the most points at the end of E-Week is declared the winner and earns bragging rights until next year.

The events in the past have included a range of physical and mental challenges, as well as some that are just flat-out fun, entertaining or charitable. “Last year we had 21 teams compete in the events that produced 33 units of blood donations for the Hoxworth Blood Center and our Date Auction raised $1,800 for the Engineers Without Borders service project. We are hoping to have an even more successful E-Week this year,” said E-Week chair Maggy Zorc before the start of this year's events.  

The week's agenda played out as follows:
 
Monday: Marathon Petroleum Corporation hosted a trivia and info session. Marathon representatives Keith Leiter and Emily Martini handed out scavenger-hunt clues and students quickly dispersed to follow their clues and be the first one back to earn 10 points. Second and third place teams were awarded 7 and 5 points.
 
Leiter and Martini, both CEAS alumni from the class of ’09 and ’07 respectively, spoke about why they and Marathon continue to support E-Week  at UC. “It is a way to stay on campus and get to know students on a different level. It is more informal than a career fair and allows us to interact with them more,” said Leiter.
 
“We loved E-Week as students,” Martini added. “I remember it always being extremely competitive.” 

Not much has changed since these two graduated - least of all the Duct Tape challenge which both remember vividly as being the most popular event.
 
Over on McMicken Commons, another sponsor was beginning an event; the Hoxworth Blood Drive. This is something Tribunal has kept going for many years since it is such a good cause.
 
“Hoxworth is very supportive of UC because UC is supportive of us. We partner with many of the different colleges, including the College of Engineering and Applied Science, to coordinate blood drives.  E-Week is another great way we can work with students to promote blood donations through a drive. We have been having this blood drive annually for over a decade now,” said Hoxworth representative Laura Reynolds. “We had 44 people come out to donate and were able to collect 41 units of blood. That’s 123 lives that were saved by E-Week blood donors!”
 
Tuesday: Competition continued beginning with Jeopardy!  The first round consisted of fairly common knowledge questions in three categories - CEAS, UC and Cincinnati. Three teams competed against each other and rotated team members after each question. With two games going on at once, the top two teams would move onto round two, narrowing it from six teams down to four. The rounds began as a fun and friendly competition.
 
Moving into round two, the atmosphere quickly changed to strictly competitive. While teams had to work together to outsmart their competition, only two could move on to Final Jeopardy.  
 

Communication was the theme for the next Tuesday event. For teams to succeed in the event they had to exhibit clear communication and time management. Students were tasked with assembling a complex gumdrop structure made from 13 gumdrops and 11 toothpicks. Although some may think this is a challenge all in itself, each team was faced with communication and time barriers. One person from each team, the runner, was allowed to see the structure the teams were to replicate. The rest of the team was sitting in a separate room with a pile of gumdrops and sticks, awaiting instruction from their runner.

Without talking or drawing, the runner had to convey the structure of the gumdrops to the rest of their team, including color and location details. Each team had to do this in a span of five minutes. The winning team was judged on the correctness of the structure. The winning team displayed great leadership, time management, team work and listening skills.

An all-time favorite E-Week event by most involved, the Hidden Time-Traveler game, better known as the Duct Tape challenge drew large crowds from across campus. Each team selected one member to hang on the window. When the time starts, teams cannot talk, and must only rip pieces of duct tape with the hopes that their team member will stick to the window the longest. Once the allotted amount of time is up, teams must cease all taping and step away from the window and the waiting game begins. The person who was taped best, and therefore hangs on the window the longest, scores points for their team.  As do those who come in second and third.

The philanthropic portion of this week continued with a food drive benefiting the Freestore Foodbank.  Items were assigned a point value and whatever items teams brought in, those points were added to their weekly total.

Wednesday included a day of pure fun with a Corn Hole tournament followed by skits that were performed by teams. All skits were judged on their costumes, props, acting and the relation of their skit to E-Week. These skits contained a variety of topics including an interview with a prestigious (and fictitious) Dr. and mythical scenes from the past, present and future; in line with this year’s E-Week theme, Blast from the Past.    
 
Thursday was an all-out battle with competitive  events including the traditional Tug-O-War and then rounds of Family Feud.  Tug-O-War began with several teams of six pullers each. You know the drill after that. The first team to pull the rope passed the indicated mark was the winner!  In a bracket style tournament, there could only be one first place team.
 
Friday after the Popsicle Stick Bridge Building contest and the annual Three Legged Race, the most competitive event of the week took place - the annual Date Auction. 
 

“The Date Auction was a huge success this year,” says Zorc. “We raised $3,800.00 for the Engineers Without Borders service project in Tanzania.”  To decide where the proceeds go, Tribunal takes applications from all CEAS student groups and a winner is selected. “Engineers Without Borders cause is very worthy of the proceeds, so we were happy to select them.”  The highest female auctioned went for $300 and the highest male went for $301!

Saturday, E-Week concluded with the annual E-Week Banquet, held at Paul Brown stadium downtown. This night out on the town included dinner, an awards ceremony led by the E-Week chairs and dancing to finish off the night.

The awards given included Professors of the Quarter and Professor of the Year, naming of the Herman Schneider Award nominees, Outstanding Senior Awards, Workforce Development Foundation Award, recognition of the College of Engineering Alumni Association Scholarship recipients, the Date Auction King and Queen, and the E-Week team winners. The banquet serves as a wrap-up of all the E-Week events.

This year, the celebration had a strong list of sponsors who helped make E-Week possible, and showed their commitment to CEAS. These sponsors included Dow Chemical Corporation, P&G, Toyota, Boston Scientific, Sun Chemical Corporation, University of Cincinnati, College of Engineering and Applied Science.

And the moment you have all been waiting for; the winners of E-Week are:

1st place - The Engineering Mafia (Ambassadors Team)

2nd place - Theta Tau

3rd place - EA Time Bombers (Ambassadors Team)

E-Week is a nationally recognized week dedicated to the positive contribution of engineers globally and at the University of Cincinnati. The National Engineers Week Foundation strives to be the global leader in cultivating and celebrating the engineering profession.