LTU Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering Celebrates Successes at Gala

SOUTHFIELD—National awards and veteran leadership at the Lawrence Technological University Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering were celebrated at a campus dinner and awards presentation Tuesday, Nov. 19, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the department’s Industry Advisory Board.

LTU’s national finalist team in the annual student design competition of the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI), part of the American Society of Civil Engineers, was one of two student achievements recognized.

Team leader was Mackenzie Murtha of Novi; co-leader was Hunter Assenmacher of Ida. Team members were Ellery Cure of Hanover, Joshua Dubin of Berkley, Olivia Fileccia of Shelby Township, Cayd Maccagnone of Clarkston, Alexander Moore of Novi, Mark Sessine of West Bloomfield Township, Ryan Swims of Lockport, Ill., Emma Trisch of Lapeer, and Leanne Walters of Shepherdsville, Ky. All are students in LTU’s Master of Science in Architectural Engineering program, and all will graduate in May 2025, except for Sessine, who will graduate at LTU’s December 2024 ceremony.

Students in the competition designed a Veterans Administration outpatient health care center in Omaha, Neb., providing full design and construction plans. The three-story, 158,000-square-foot care center was designed to support nearly 400 patient visits daily. The LTU team’s structural, electrical, mechanical, and construction teams worked together to further the design of a functional and welcoming environment for veterans to receive medical care.

Just four universities were selected as finalists in the competition, and made their presentations to a panel of industry experts in April in San Jose, Calif. The team also won a second place medal for their construction engineering work. Other finalists were Drexel University, the University of Nebraska, and Pennsylvania State University.

LTU faculty members advising the team were Keith Kowalkowski, assistant chair of the department, Ahmed Al-Bayati, associate professor in the department, and former LTU assistant professors Deokoh Woo and Morteza Nazari-Heris.

Also recognized was LTU’s project that won a $10,000 Engineering Education Award from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES). It’s second straight year the LTU program has been honored by NCEES. LTU was one of just seven national winners out of 38 entries.

Members of this team were Sidney Lemieux of Grand Blanc, Brendan Mahoney of Livonia, Gabriel Iacobelli of Macomb Township, Nicholas Betz of Birmingham, and Milad Alesmail of Inkster. All are 2024 graduates from LTU with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. Faculty advisers on the project were Nishantha Bandara, Kowalkowski, Edmund Yuen, Al-Bayati, Yifei Ma, and Mena Bebawy. Bandara, Bebawy and Yuen are associate professors in the department, while Ma is assistant professor.

The winning NCEES project was a proposed transit center at the former Michigan State Fairgrounds at Eight Mile Road and Woodward Avenue in Detroit. The 113,000-square-foot center would feature a 40-room hotel for travelers, lounges and locker rooms for bus drivers and train operators, a security office, a transportation library and a visitor center. The team’s entry included a project schedule, cost estimates, and structural, geotechnical, transportation, water resource management-environmental, and construction engineering plans.

In announcing the award, NCEES CEO B. David Cox congratulated LTU for its “efforts to integrate professional practice and education.”

The event also featured special recognition for Edmund Yuen, an LTU faculty member for 36 years and chair of the Civil and Architectural Engineering Department from 2010 to 2021. In presenting Yuen with a crystal award marking his service, current department chair Elin Jensen said: “He really is the core, the backbone of our department… Every single day, the students come first for him.”

For information on LTU’s civil and architectural engineering programs, visit ltu.edu/engineering/civil-and-architectural-engineering.

Lawrence Technological University is one of only 13 independent, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States. Located in Southfield, Mich., LTU was founded in 1932 and offers more than 100 programs through its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, Engineering, and Health Sciences, as well as Specs@LTU as part of its growing Center for Professional Development. PayScale lists Lawrence Tech among the nation’s top 11 percent of universities for alumni salaries. Forbes and The Wall Street Journal rank LTU among the nation’s top 10 percent. U.S. News and World Report list it in the top tier of the best Midwest colleges. And LTU is included in the Princeton Review’s “The Best 390 Colleges 2025 Edition,” a list of the nation’s top 15 percent of colleges and universities. Students benefit from small class sizes and a real-world, hands-on, “theory and practice” education with an emphasis on leadership. Activities on Lawrence Tech’s 107-acre campus include more than 60 student organizations and NAIA varsity sports.