This article is from page 98 of the 2008-07-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 98 JPG
ENNIS student Noel Whelan has won the engineering award at the 3rd annual Wood Marketing Awards held in Enfield.
Noel represented Galway/Mayo IT Letterfrack with the project entitled ‘When Ash Meets Cowhide’. His project addresses the current prob- lems faced by hurley makers in the country and it is aimed at finding solutions to ensure that GAA hur- ley manufacturing industry remains in Ireland, tackling the problem of insufficient native ash supplies and high labour costs.
Noel was presented with his award by RTE presenter Duncan Stewart.
Reaching the final represented a ma- jor achievement for Noel given that over 100 projects were entered in the three categories of engineering, ar- chitecture and design by third level students from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. A sec- ond project presented by a County Clare student made it to this year’s jnbeeeD Ese
Cork IT student Seamus Moroney, from Clogher, O’Callaghan Mills, was short-listed for his project “Mo- ment Connections in Timber con- struction’, in the engineering section. Fifteen Students were drawn for the finals from universities nationwide, including DIT Mountjoy Square Dublin, Bray PLC, Southern Region-
al College Lurgan, Galway Mayo In- stitute of Technology, NUIG, Queens University Belfast, Cork IT, UCD and the University of Ulster Jordan- stown.
Speaking at the awards, Duncan Stewart spoke of the high standard of entries which had been received and thanked the WMF, all the students and their lecturers for their commit- ment to the competition.
“This year’s competition has been incredible. We have seen 15 projects at a very high standard and all the projects here today deserve to be winners,” he said.
The students assembled at the start of the day and set up their presenta- tion stands. Models were created by
all teams and these were backed up by PowerPoint presentations and Al posters and other supporting litera- ture.
The students were interviewed for RTE’s Nationwide during the day with the actual award ceremony tak- ing place at 3.30pm. The WME in- stituted this all-Ireland award to pro- mote the use of wood as a design and building material.