Students in West Virginia University’s chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers recently hosted 140 students from seven universities at the annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference, held Feb. 22-24. IIE conferences strive to stimulate research and creative thinking as well as developing networking skills and contacts for student members.

“I was very pleased to see our students work together as a team to plan and successfully implement that plan for such a large scale event like this conference,” said Wafik Iskander, professor and chair of industrial and management systems engineering. “The students’ hard work produced a very successful conference.”

The IIE conference provides a forum for the presentation of undergraduate student research papers. This year, WVU’s Faith Calhoun, from California, Pa., won the competition with her paper titled, “Excess Material Reduction Project at Special Metals, Inc.” Calhoun will represent WVU and the Mid-Atlantic Region at the 2013 IIE Annual Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“It was great to see one of our own students win first place in the paper competition,” Iskander said. “This is an indication of the quality of our program.”

Conference attendees received a tour of Swanson Industries in Morgantown, which specializes in cylinder repair, remanufacturing and manufacturing for industrial hydraulic and mechanical components.

Students had the opportunity to network and learn best practices from experienced industrial engineers during speaker presentations. The keynote presentation was by Marci Jackson, the director of enterprise information management at Premier Healthcare Alliance.

“The conference provided valuable engineering, professional and leadership skills that will help (students) with their academic and professional careers,” said Jared Dunlap, senior industrial engineering major and student conference chair from Washington, Pa.

dar/03/05/13

-WVU-

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CONTACT: Mary C. Dillon
304-293-4086; mary.dillon@mail.wvu.edu