Over this past week, tents dotted the grass behind the Engineering Buildings on Centennial Campus as the Centennial Campus Challenge exposed College of Engineering students to real-world engineering problems. Some of them took the opportunity to camp out for five days.

Bryan Parsons, a senior in computer engineering, said the change in scenery was pleasant.

“I like it a lot; I really enjoy camping out in general, so coming here and sleeping on the ground [the] last few nights has been pretty refreshing.” Parsons said participating in the Challenge has helped him to get to class on time since most of his classes are held on Centennial Campus in the Engineering Buildings.

Rebecca Furman, a sophomore in computer science, said she enjoyed the camping and the festivities.

“It’s pretty fun, this is my first time camping out like this and there’s free food.”

According to John Petitte, a co-chair of the event, the Centennial Campus Challenge was initially meant to be a charity-based, engineering outreach event, but it moved away from that purpose because the College of Engineering wanted it to be a focal event on Centennial Campus. Petitte, a senior in chemical and biomolecular engineering and biochemistry, joined the event committee last year as the treasurer and public relations manager, becoming a co-chair this year along with Chris Millns, a senior in textile engineering.

“I was looking to get more involved and it seemed like a pretty good idea,” Petitte said of the reason he decided to become one of the event organizers.  “[It was] something that’d take a lot of work and [would have] a lot of interesting stuff, so I decided to jump on board.”

The Centennial Campus Challenge offers students a wide variety of activities, from music and carnival games to cookouts and the Greatest Engineer Challenge, which provides students with the opportunity to think through practical issues regularly faced by engineers.

Petitte said although last year was a great beginning for the Greatest Engineer Challenge, this year’s event has been even better due to greater sponsorship.

“We’ve worked with two companies closely, Skanska and Novozymes, and a third company just came in, Parsons, that wanted to specifically get their name on the Greatest Engineer Challenge,” Petitte said.

Because of the donations of funds and materials along with the efforts of Alex Manasa, a junior in aerospace engineering, this year’s Greatest Engineer Challenge has featured some interesting and detailed engineering-related activities. Events in the Challenge included a bottle rocket and model airplane challenge and a challenge sponsored by Novozymes, which required students to erect a distillation column and to see how much alcohol they could distill from fermented yeast.  Overall, the Challenge has been upgraded from last year’s program.

“The Challenge has been really stepped up this year, it’s really great and Alex Manasa did a really great job on it,” Petitte said. The Challenge increased its number of registrations from 98 last year to 172, the number of actual attendees from 56 to 114 and the number of campers from about 50 to more than 70. According to Petitte, this is the result of better organization, greater sponsorship and increased publicity of the event.

In Petitte’s opinion, a further goal of the Challenge has been to develop awareness of the numerous benefits available to students with having Centennial Campus. “The Challenge has [gone] from raising money for charity to getting [student] engineers on Centennial Campus and doing something other than studying; we’re holding an event on Centennial Campus that’ll put students on Centennial Campus.” Petitte said while students may have classes on Centennial Campus, most just do work instead of doing everything that a student can do on the campus. Jeff Moan, the treasurer of the Union Activities Board, shares Petitte’s views.

“We’re trying to get Centennial Campus more involved; we’re trying to get more events up here,” Moan said. “The [Challenge] is a great event so [we’re looking into] doing some events like this at other times [on Centennial].”  Although Centennial Campus may not have housing or dining halls just yet, Petitte said, the Centennial Campus Challenge is the beginning of a transition that over the next several years will cause more students to think of Centennial Campus as an integral part of the University.