Engineering students to build bridge on campus

Students in the College of Engineering plan to construct a bridge on campus in just a few weeks. This prototype bridge will be built in the quad outside the Hughes Center, and the parts will be shipped to Honduras and rebuilt during a mission trip this spring. Once in Honduras, the bridge will allow grade school students to safely cross a highway on their school campus. According to Kerry Patterson, associate professor of engineering, the road will become the main access to a new port facility and will likely become busier in the future, making the bridge more needed. The team of student volunteers, co-led by alumni Luke Burris and Ethan Johnson, will have the parts manufactured in America. But for now, construction of the prototype is being held off until approval from the Honduran government. “Once we have approval, it will be about 4-5 weeks before we will be ready to build the bridge on campus,” Patterson said. Construction of the campus bridge should begin in February. The campus bridge will be over 100 feet long and one to two feet off the ground, but the official bridge will be 4 feet wide and nearly 8 feet tall to allow traffic to pass under it. Between 15 and 20 students will travel to Honduras to construct the bridge. The project will be done in partnership with Honduras Outreach Inc., a non-profit mission...