2008: The Year in Review, Illustrated Academic Edition

Like many others this month, I've succumbed to the temptation to reflect upon the past year. Maybe it's the influence of all those print articles and television retrospectives analyzing the year to which we only recently bid adieu? In any case, here are my nominations on behalf of the North American Be Careers Network team:

The 2008 academic highlights, North American Edition:

GenerativeComponents continues to create excitement--and amazing projects--in schools of Architecture. In 2008 we launched the GenerativeComponents University Program, offering workshops for faculty and students at the following campuses: Penn, Yale, U Arkansas, Ohio State, University of Michigan, Columbia & Stevens Institute of Technology.

We also sponsored a three day GC workshop in October, prior to the ACADIA 2008 Conference (see  http://www.acadia.org/acadia2008/?page_id=43 )  The workshop was led by Rob Woodbury (Simon Fraser University) and Kaustuv DeBiswas (MIT) and included 16 participants, from professional practice and from nine universities. After just a few days of introduction to GC, workshop participants produced impressive projects.

        

Showcases of Student work:
In May, we were pleased to sponsor a Showcase of Penn student projects, all utilizing GenerativeComponents. The students' work was truly remarkable both for its diversity (encompassing architectural, biological, and even textile projects) and its creative application of Bentley's parametric design software.

         

         

Note: GC Showcase events will also take place at U Michigan on January 28th, 2009, at the Center for Architecture in New York City (for Stevens Institute of Technology student projects) on March 18th, 2009 & at Yale on March 25th, 2009.

We were also the lead sponsor of the Arch Schools 2008 exhibit, at the Center for Architecture in New York City. http://www.aiany.org/centerforarchitecture/exhibitionspast.php#past  The exhibit ran October 18th-December 19th, with fourteen Architecture schools from the tri-state area showcasing student work for metro-area design professionals and the public. I snapped many photos at the opening day event, but can share only a few here:

          Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Student work     Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Student work 2

     Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Student work 3         

         

Student Competitions (to spotlight a few, among many):

Be Awards of Excellence: A panel of independent jurors gathered in April, to determine the winners of Bentley's 2008 Be Awards student competitions. Thank you again to our jurors: Michael J. Chajes, Charlie McGowan, Tristan Al-Haddad, and Tom Barrett! The jurors had many strong submissions to choose from, and a difficult task selecting the winner for each category. See the winners here:  http://communities.bentley.com/content/2008BEAwardsAcademicWinners.aspx

Future City: In short, always one of our favorite parts of National Engineers Week. Check out
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Community/Academic/Student+Competitions/Future+City.htm

The 21st annual ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition took place in Montreal, QC, in June. We were happy to sponsor the national competition for another year, and impressed by the ever-evolving designs and innovation of the student teams over the years. You can read my blog about the competition here: http://communities.bentley.com/Other/Old_Site_Member_Blogs/Bentley_Employees/b/laura_meiers_blog/archive/2008/06/23/2008-asce-national-concrete-canoe-competition.aspx

In February 2008, we presented prizes to the winners of the MicroStation Student Competition at EAST Conference. The winning team was from Henderson Health Sciences Magnet Middle School in Little Rock, AR for their entry entitled "Schoolyard Habitat Arboretum".

We also committed to sponsor the 2009 AISC/ ASCE National Student Steel Bridge Competition (NSSBC) www.aisc.org/steelbridge . This past fall, we sent free software and tutorials to all steel bridge teams at ASCE student chapters; we're looking forward to seeing the results at UNLV in May 2009!

Be Conference 2008 took place in Baltimore May 28-30. Highlights included the Be Awards of Excellence ceremony, during which Educator of the Year winner Peter Glaudemans (Eastern Technical High School, MD) was honored:

We also enjoyed meeting with both Academic and commercial users during our Best Practices session on connecting Academia & Industry.

Of course, 2008 also involved many campus visits with faculty and students, Be User Group meetings, and conferences. To my mind, whenever we have the opportunity to meet with our Academic and commercial users it's always a highlight.

As we look forward to an exciting new year, I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2009 on behalf of the entire Be Careers Network team.