The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) earlier this month announced a first-place result for Ferris State University Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVACR) students in their International HVAC System Selection Competition.

The purpose of the competition is to recognize outstanding student design projects, to encourage undergraduate students to become involved in the profession while applying their knowledge of practical design and to promote teamwork.

Teams compete in one of the three categories: HVAC Design Calculations, Integrated Sustainable Building Design (ISBD) and HVAC System Selection.

The Ferris HVACR team will receive the HVAC System Selection award at the 2022 ASHRAE Winter meeting to be held January 29 through February 2, 2022, in Las Vegas. Team members include:

Brian Van Schepen (Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada)

Cole Quinlan (Orangeville, Ontario, Canada)

Nicholas Schramski (Kinde, Michigan, USA)

Evan Eldred (Flint, Michigan, USA)

Cole Weber (Saint Johns, Michigan, USA)

Jordanny Williams (Ladyville, Belize)

This 2021 Student Design Competition focused on a new fictitious 50,000 square foot building located on a higher education campus in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada. The building included a two-story cafeteria, associated offices, and a commercial kitchen with storage space. The teams were tasked with providing safe and healthy storage of food materials on the lower level in a manner that prevents spoiling and the growth of bacteria, while providing enough kitchen/server space and permanent seating to serve a peak occupancy of 720 students at any time with 3,000 students using the facility per day.

Joseph Pacella, the Ferris ASHRAE team’s lead advisor comments, “Since 1997, the projects the Ferris HVACR students work on continually become more challenging in the ASHRAE equipment selection competition. The HVACR team did an amazing job and should be commended for the considerable work and out of the box solutions for the competition.” He added, “It was quite the journey leading up to our first-place result, which has not occurred for the Ferris State University HVACR program in nearly fourteen years. The team members graduated in May 2021 and all are gainfully employed. This first place award is a significant achievement as they begin their professional careers and speaks to the tremendous amount of effort exerted by this outstanding group of students.”

ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is an international organization of 55,000 persons. Its sole objective is to advance through research, standards writing, publishing and continuing education the science of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration serving the evolving needs of the public.

source: media release, Ferris State University