AGCO National Student Design Competition

(see also APPENDIX 5)

Purpose: The purpose of the AGCO Student Design Competition, is to encourage undergraduate students to participate in the basic design of an engineering project useful to agriculture and related areas and to provide an arena of professionalism in which the student can experience peer recognition of a well conceived and executed design project.

Awards will be presented at the ASABE Annual International Meeting awards program.

Cash awards of $1250, $1000, and $750 will be presented to the first, second and third place entries. The method of distributing the prize money to design team members shall be determined by the respective members of each team. All participants of the first, second and third place entries shall receive certificates of recognition. Individuals of the first place entry shall receive desk plaques.

The Academic Department of the first place entry will receive a $300 scholarship and a wall plaque. The wall plaque will include the names of the design team and their faculty advisor.

AGCO National Student Design Competition

Eligibility

Contestants shall be Student Members of ASABE and undergraduates at the time their design projects are conducted. Candidates will be declared ineligible for the competition if more than twelve (12) months have lapsed between the awarding of the degree and the ASABE Annual Interational Meeting at which the winner of the competition will be decided.

     Membership in a local Student Branch is not required and will not substitute for Student Membership in ASABE.

     Papers submitted for the K. K. Barnes Student Paper Awards Competition may not be entered in this AGCO National Student Design Competition.

     Projects may be conceived and executed by multiple contestants. All members of the design groups must be eligible as outlined above.

Appropriate Format
ASABE headquarters will check each paper as it is received for the appropriate format as specified in FORMAT FOR ENTRIES given below. Entries which do not meet the specified format will be returned to the authors without further judging.

Competition Entry Requirements
Projects must involve engineering design, which is the process of devising a machine, component, system, or process to meet a desired need. It involves analysis, synthesis and decision-making processes (often iterative), in which the basic sciences, mathematics and engineering sciences, and technology are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. The words "machine, component, system, or process" and "convert resources optimally" operate to indicate that sociological, economic, aesthetic, legal, ethical, etc. considerations can be included. All projects must be related to agriculture or related areas.

The design projects must include:

1. A written report (see format for entries).
2. Drawings and/or specifications that describe the design.
3. Extensive or substantial test or performance data obtained from (1) a prototype or physical model of the machine or critical component, and/or (2) a computer simulated test of the system or process.

Report Submission
1. No single school may submit more than two entries for a given year’s competition.

2. Entries are to be submitted electronically as a PDF file and sent via an email attachment to the attention of ASABE Awards Administrator at flautt@asabe.org no later than May 3. It is the entrants’ responsibility to verify that the converted file appears as intended.

3. Eligibility will be determined by the date the Awards Administrator receives the complete entry.

Selection of Winners
Selection of winners will be in two phases. The first phase is based on written submissions. Three judges will score the papers in accordance with the Student Design Competition score sheet. These judges then forward their scores to the Awards Administrator by May 19 for final ranking. Final ranking is determined by first calculating a group average and group standard deviation for all scores submitted by the three judges. These two values are then used to normalize the scores submitted by each judge (normalization involves the transformation of the scores submitted by each judge so that the average and standard deviation of the scores given by each judge match the group average and group standard deviation, respectively). An average “normalized” score will then be calculated for each entry. The Administrator is responsible for inviting the teams submitting the three top scoring written reports to the ASABE Annual International Meeting for phase two judging. Should any of the top three teams be unable to participate, the Awards Administrator shall invite one or more of the next ranking entries.

In the second phase, judges will evaluate the oral presentations of participants. Oral scores from the judges are normalized in the same manner as was used for the written report scores. The normalized oral score is added to the written score to determine final standing of the top three entries. Decision of the judges is final.

Selection of Judges
The ASABE Student Design Committee chair shall select three individuals to judge the written portion of the competition. The individuals should be members of different ASABE Districts. Judge selection should reflect the fact that design entries may originate from any technical area in agricultural, food, or biological engineering.

Once the scoring of the written portion of the competition has been completed, the ASABE Student Design Committee chair shall select three individuals to judge the oral portion of the competition. These individuals should be members of different ASABE Districts, and they should have no significant past or current affiliation with any of the schools participating in the oral portion of the competition. Individuals selected to judge the written portion of the competition are also eligible to judge the oral portion of the competition as long as they have no significant past or current affiliation with any of the schools participating in the oral portion of the competition.

Awards
Awards will be presented at the ASABE Annual International Meeting awards program.

Cash awards of $1250, $1000, and $750 will be presented to the first, second and third place entries. The method of distributing the prize money to design team members shall be determined by the respective members of each team. All participants of the first, second and third place entries shall receive certificates of recognition. Individuals of the first place entry shall receive desk name plates.

The Academic Department of the first place entry will receive a $300 scholarship and a wall plaque. The wall plaque will include the names of the design team and their faculty advisor(s).

Disposition of Entries
ASABE reserves the right to publish entries in whole or in part in Society publications.

A summary of national survey results by category will be made available through the Students department of Resource magazine.

Approved - June, 1977

Revised - June, 1978, December, 1980, June, 1982, June, 1986,

June, 1989, June, 1992, June, 1993, August 1995, September, 2006, September 2007,

September, 2008, January, 2009

STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION SCORE SHEET

STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION FORMAT FOR ENTRIES

The total length of the written report (including title page, table of contents, main body, references, appendices, etc.) cannot exceed 30 pages nor shall the electronic file size exceed 4 megabytes.  The first three pages must be formatted in accordance with items 1, 2 and 3.

1. Title Page. The cover page of the entry shall state:

a. the project title,
b. full name(s) of the contestant(s),
c. name of the department and school,
d. name(s) of the advisor(s) for the paper,
e. expected date(s) of graduation,
f. signatures of contestant(s), advisor(s), and the student branch faculty advisor (department head if no student branch exists). If electronic signatures cannot be sent, a copy of the signed title page will need to be faxed to the attention of Carol Flautt at (269) 429-3852 by May 3, and
g. date of signature.

In case of multi-authored papers, all correspondence will be directed to the first author unless otherwise requested as a footnote on the cover page.

2. Second Page. The second page shall contain:

a. The project title,
b. an abstract of the project report with a length not to exceed 250 words (do not include literature citations or references to tables, figures, or equations in the abstract), and
c. acknowledgements which must include specific contributions of all other individuals, organizations and/or companies that have made any supportive contributions to the project such as drafting, typing, prototype construction, photo or art work, financial support, etc.

3. Third Page. The third page shall contain the table of contents.

4. Main Body. The main body of the report should be organized under appropriate headings. The presentation should follow a logical pattern and conform to good technical writing standards. Drawings and/or specifications and test data should be entered as appropriate. The length of the main body of the report is limited to a maximum of 5000 words. Font size must not be less than 10 and all margins must not be less than 0.8 inches.

5. References. Provide a complete reference list for all sources cited in the document.

6. Appendices. Appendices can be added to provide information that helps support/clarify the main body of the report. Each appendix should be titled and listed in the Table of Contents. Note that competition judges will not be required to read appendices, although the content of the appendices could factor into a judge's evaluation.