Engineering

Western Nevada College Professional Skills Program will offer Beginning SolidWorks, Level 1 solid modeling CAD software on Thursday evenings this fall at the Carson City campus. This 3D drafting application is popular across a wide range of industries for engineering design, documentation and simulation.

Experienced professional Bill Perez will lead students through the basics of SolidWorks 2013-2014. Classes meet in a lab setting with a workstation available to each student.

It will meet Thursdays, Oct. 16 – Dec. 18, 7-9:45 p.m. The course fee is $199.

Visitors to the Lake Tahoe Summit on Tuesday, August 19 will notice new gateway signs along three Nevada highways leading into the Lake Tahoe Watershed. Installed near Daggett Summit on Nevada State Route 207, Spooner Summit on U.S. Highway 50 and on Nevada State Route 431 the Mount Rose Highway, the decorative gateway signs read, “Entering the Lake Tahoe Watershed — Help Protect It!”

With a cooperative pact signed earlier this year, the highest ranking military official in Kingdom of Tonga, Brig. Gen. Tau'aika Uta Atu, visited Carson City Monday, the first stop on his tour of Nevada.

The Nevada National Guard and the South Pacific island nation are one of the newest official relationships created in the National Guard's State Partnership Program, a Department of Defense function that links a state's National Guard with the armed forces or equivalent of a partner country in a cooperative, mutually beneficial agreement.

Managing water in northern Nevada’s Truckee-Carson River System requires local communities to balance urban, agricultural and ecosystem needs. Changes in historical climate trends are increasingly expected to make this balancing act more challenging. A competitive grant totaling $3.8 million has been awarded to the University of Nevada, Reno and the Desert Research Institute in partnership with the U.S.

A mountain is being destroyed, and the neighborhood below it is being polluted by off-road vehicles in Douglas County.
Hot Springs Mountain is on BLM land, and it towers right above the neighborhood known as Johnson Lane.
The mountain has been cut up by a web of trails created by off-road vehicles.
Heavy use of the trails pulverizes the soil and the trails become loose and unable to support even foot traffic yet alone the vehicle traffic. The off-road operators then cut new (bypass) trails. Ultimately the new trails get pulverized and the process starts again.

Nevada Performance Academy will be adding another dimension to their program by offering workshops to give kids the chance to meet professionals in other fields of interest such as medicine, engineering, accounting and more.

Parents interested in enrollment or seeking information are being asked to attend an informative meeting on Aug. 11 and again Aug. 12, 6:15 p.m. at VT Williams and Associates, 3470 G.S. Richards Blvd., Carson City.

The fourth graders worked at the computer screens for hours, fingers dancing over the keyboard and figures on the screen spinning, growing and changing colors. And, their parents were happy. The students weren’t playing games; they were designing and building things like a whistle, buildings, hot air balloon, cars, DNA models, bracelets, airplanes and more, using a 3-D modeling and CAD design program.

CARSON CITY - Eight Airmen from the Nevada Air National Guard joined 160 people from seven nations Monday to provide humanitarian assistance to the citizens of Tonga as part of Operation Pacific Angel-Tonga.

The mission will continue until July 26. Tonga is Nevada National Guard's partner in the National Guard's State Partnership Program, the Department of Defense program that links a state's National Guard with the armed forces or equivalent of a partner country in a cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship.

Do you know an extraordinary woman who has distinguished herself as an outstanding member of the community?

The Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada will honor women from across northern Nevada who truly stand out for their commitment to the community. Nominations are now being accepted for the 2014 TRIUMPHANT: Celebrating Women In Leadership awards program.

A 70-foot-long, 52-ton concrete bridge survived a series of 10 earthquakes in the first multiple-shake-table experiment in the University of Nevada, Reno’s new Earthquake Engineering Lab, the newest addition to the world-renowned earthquake/seismic engineering facility.

The move is complete and experiments are underway in the University of Nevada, Reno’s new Earthquake Engineering Laboratory. The College of Engineering hosted a grand opening today celebrating the new lab space in the world-renowned seismic engineering facility.

Carson City Library will host the 2014 Spokes team Monday as they ride through town. The group of seven students and alumni from Harvard, MIT, and Columbia are biking from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

Spokes America is a bike trip across the United States designed to make STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) accessible to students everywhere. The Spokes team will be at the Carson City Library with plans to run a “Learning Festival” during their June 16 visit.

Making Western Nevada College the best educational experience possible for students brings pleasure to Rob and Dorothy Ramsdell. Over the past 15 years, the Carson City couple has been instrumental in improving programs, facilities, equipment and students’ educational opportunities at WNC.

Their unwavering generosity and support of WNC recently touched the college’s Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Construction Management program when they made a lead gift of $100,000 for the an endowed faculty chair position.

Western Nevada College will graduate 543 students this spring. Commencement was held Monday in Carson City with a ceremony to be held Tuesday in Fallon. The class of 2014 will receive a record 581 degrees and certificates.

Also on Monday, the WNC nursing program graduates celebrated with a traditional pinning ceremony at the Carson Nugget. Dr. Tom Kubistant, a WNC psychology and communications instructor, delivered the Carson City ceremony commencement address.

More than 30 local kids participated in an egg drop competition Saturday at the Carson City Library. The contest involved creating protective packaging for an uncooked egg, which was then dropped from the roof.

Prizes were awarded for creativity and successfully protecting the egg. The month-long Discover Tech exhibit, which introduces kids to all aspects of engineering, is open through May 24 and wraps up this week with the Trebuchet catapult competition on Friday at Mills Park.

The University of Nevada, Reno named James Bridegum the recipient of the 2014 Herz Gold Medal for outstanding scholarship. The Herz Gold Medal is presented each year during the Spring Commencement ceremony to the graduating senior with the highest grade-point average.

Bridegum, a native Nevadan and graduate of Carson High School in Carson City, graduates from the University Friday, May 16, with a bachelor’s of science degree in computer science and engineering with a minor in mathematics. He earned a 4.0 grade-point average.

The University of Nevada, Reno’s 2014 Spring Commencement will confer 2,251 degrees and certificates. There will be three ceremonies, one for advanced-degree recipients Friday afternoon, May 16, and two for bachelor-degree recipients on the mornings of Friday, May 16 and Saturday, May 17. All three ceremonies will be held on the University’s historic Quadrangle, located on the southern part of campus.

Parents and children turned the Carson City Library into a mini golf course Friday as part of the month-long Discover Tech program. The event featured engineering concepts as participants built ramps, tunnels and obstacles to create the course.

David C. Antonucci, author, historian and regional expert on Lake Tahoe, Mark Twain, and the Olympic Games at the Lake, will speak on “Fairest Picture – Mark Twain at Lake Tahoe”, the first and only book devoted solely to chronicling Mark Twain’s experiences in the Lake Tahoe region to the Carson City Leisure Hour Club on Wednesday, May 21.

Lee Dyer, David Sanders and James Sedinger have been named the 2014 University of Nevada, Reno Foundation Professors in recognition of their outstanding research and teaching achievements. It is an honor set in stone as their names will be added to the list of Foundation Professors engraved in the granite pillars of the University’s Honor Court.

Building on the Carson City library’s month-long focus on engineering, on May 14 at 6:30 p.m. Library Director Sena Loyd will facilitate a panel discussion among five local professional engineers, four women and a gentleman about the ways females of all ages can succeed and advance in the field of engineering and be recognized for life-changing contributions as engineers and leaders.

The talk will be hosted from the Carson City Library’s business branch, the Business Resource Innovation Center (the BRIC) located at 108 E. Proctor St.

University of Nevada Cooperative Extension’s 4-H presents Capital City Farm Days 8:30 a.m. - 2 p.m., April 17 and 18. There will be 30 presenters teaching elementary-age youth about Nevada agriculture, where food and fiber come from, and environmental issues related to agriculture.

Attendees will include public, private and home-schooled students and their families from Carson City, Storey County, Douglas County and Dayton Valley.

From the Carson City Library on April 14 at 6 p.m. a group of six engineers are slated to cut the grand opening ribbon on a traveling exhibit supported by the National Science Foundation, titled Discover Tech: Engineers Make a World of Difference.

Nevada State Engineer Mr. Jason King, P.E. as well as five previous Nevada State Engineers who served in the top post starting from 1967 through 2010 will join King to celebrate arrival of the engineering-focused interactive exhibit.

Chanwoo Park, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, joins a growing group of researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno who have received prestigious and highly competitive National Science Foundation CAREER awards.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award is given to junior faculty at the beginning of their academic careers who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars, placing focus on high-quality research and education activities.

Robert Ballard is known for his discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic, the battleship Bismarck, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown and President John F. Kennedy's PT-109. The famous ocean explorer is the final speaker in this year’s Discover Science Lecture Series Thursday, April 3 at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The University of Nevada, Reno had several notable rankings in the annual listing of the nation’s best graduate schools and programs released in March by U.S. News and World Report. Overall, the University achieved an all-time-high with four graduate school and 24 graduate program rankings.

The Carson City Historical Society will present its first "Third Thursday" lecture of 2014 with "The Virginia and Truckee Railway at mid-century and beyond: A personal glimpse," by Steve VanDenburgh.

The March 20, 6 p.m. presentation is at the Business Resource Innovation Center, also known as BRIC, which is a partnership of Carson City Library, Office of Business Development, Building, Engineering, Planning and Business Licensing, located at 108 E. Proctor Street.

A STEM Career Investigation Program, hosted this semester by the University of Nevada, Reno’s Raggio Research Center, is offering Washoe County School District sophomores, juniors and seniors the opportunity to observe current scientific and engineering research being conducted at the University and affiliated institutions.

“The idea behind this program is to offer exposure for students to realize careers in many specialized areas of science and engineering,” Jacque Ewing-Taylor, associate director, Raggio Research Center for STEM Education and institutional grants coordinator, said.

John Wagner, a retired engineering instructor with Sony and 15-year-resident of Carson City filed Monday for the position of Assemblyman from District 40 held by Pete Livermore who decided not to run. Wagner filed as a member of the American Independent Party.

“After the two major parties, having caused major damage to the people of Nevada with massive tax increases and regulations, it is time for a change. The citizens of Nevada deserve better,” stated Wagner.

Carson City Public Works Director Andrew Burnham announced his retirement effective June 2. Burnham has served as Public Works Director since 2000.

To facilitate an easy transition, Burnham will step down and serve as the Deputy Public Works Director until his retirement date.