Civil Engineering Student Writes Award-Winning Paper

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Danielle Neighbour, a senior in the civil engineering department and an Honors College student, has received the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students from the American Society of Civil Engineers. This prize is awarded annually for a student paper on professional ethics. The assigned topic this year was, "When working in a foreign location, what defines the design standard which the engineer can rely on to have met his or her ethical obligation to provide a safe and sound engineering solution or design?"

In her paper, Neighbour explains that engineers working outside the U.S. are not able to rely on legal standards to guide ethical behavior. "In today's globalized world, it's becoming increasingly common to conduct assignments on international soil," she explains. "When doing so, it's easy for grey areas to cause an oversight of ethics. For example, many construction materials available in foreign countries are not standardized and are thus challenging to classify when applying design standards. It can also be difficult to conduct business with uniquely organized governments."

She goes on to discuss international standards and approaches that different industries have taken to ensure that safety standards are followed in global projects, but Neighbour concludes that "ultimately, an engineer's ethical obligations delve beyond a book of legal requirements. One standard remains the same regardless of location: the value of a human life. Even in developing nations with no standardized codes, the value of one life does not change." She recommends that "an engineer should utilize stringent codes, whether they are determined by the IBC, local standards, American regulations, or the engineer's personal judgment, to offer the most economical and safe design solution."

Neighbour's thesis comes from her direct experience practicing civil engineering both in the U.S. and abroad. She has made several study abroad trips, studying farming techniques and water access in Vietnam, taking Spanish classes in Barcelona and designing potable water systems for indigenous tribes in Ecuador. She has taken part in two research projects: one with the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences on fluids on Titan, one of Jupiter's moons, and another on the efficacy of rainwater filtration methods. Neighbour is currently interning with Burns and McDonnell in Kansas City, Missouri.

Neighbour's trips to Vietnam and Barcelona were supported by grants from the Honors College, and her research on Titan was supported with a Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship grant and a grant from NASA. She explained that in preparing her entry, she had support from civil engineering faculty and Charles Zimmerman, an alumnus of the civil engineering department.

"I am honored to represent the University of Arkansas on the national level," said Neighbour. "I'd like to thanks Dr. Coffman, Dr. Hall, and Mr. Charles Zimmerman. They all were an immense help to me during the writing process."