Media Advisory: Come Root for UB at the Concrete Canoe Race on Lake LaSalle

More than 100 students from the region's top engineering institutions, including Cornell, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Clarkson and UB, will compete for the title of Upstate New York champion in the annual concrete canoe competition to be held tomorrow (Saturday, April 18, 2009) on Lake LaSalle on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

These students must not only know how to design and build concrete canoes that float and perform as racing vessels, they must also be athletic enough to compete in a canoe sprint across Lake LaSalle.

The event is free and open to the public. Spectators should look for the tent at Baird Point.

Great visuals! Great outdoor feature story!

From 10:15 a.m. to 1 p.m., teams of engineering students from 10 colleges and universities in upstate New York and Quebec will race across Lake LaSalle in concrete canoes they designed and built.

The concrete canoe competition provides students the opportunity to gain hands-on, practical experience and leadership skills. They must design a hull that's sleek enough to race and create a concrete mixture that is more buoyant than water.

The contest is sponsored by the UB Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and the UB student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Best time for media: 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Press arrangements: Ellen Goldbaum in the UB Office of University Communications at 645-5000 ext. 1415, or Todd Snyder, on-site at 645-4006. Snyder is a UB instructor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and faculty advisor for the UB student chapter of the ASCE.