In Late August, KCI hosted 14 students and two faculty from New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as part of a unique design project. Some of the 14 seniors had never seen the inside of an engineering firm, much less designed a large-scale civil engineering project to meet actual client specifications. But at the end of a full week of team collaboration and occasional briefings and mentoring sessions from KCI engineers, two student teams, using a set of unidentified operational, environmental, and aesthetic design parameters, had developed plans for a Maryland Commuter Rail (MARC) station. Their designs proved to be very good, in fact, pretty close to the teams’ unknown model: KCI’s award-winning Dorsey Commuter Rail Station, located east of I-95 in Howard County, Maryland.
The students toured the facility on their last day, meeting Maryland State Senator Leonard Teitelbaum, Maryland Transportation Secretary David L. Winstead, and MTA Director of Engineering Frank S. Waeshe. Senator Teitelbaum urged the students to “Play a role in your community.” Director Waeshe agreed, “You can’t be a good engineer unless you’re a good citizen.”
The design experience inaugurates the Annual Admiral Louis B. Combs Memorial Design Retreat, sponsored by RPI alumni. KCI’s CEO, Jack Kinstlinger, PE, is an RPI alumnus and chairs the Advisory Board to RPI’s Civil Engineering Department.
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