Article by Karen Greco

The kick-off to the University of Delaware’s Alumni Weekend for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is our Alumni and Friends Golf outing. This year, Friday, June 7, 2019 marked the eleventh such event. We set a record for the highest number of participants with 136 golfers which is the most the course could accommodate for tournament play.  Play began with teams doubled up on each tee for the shot-gun start. A dozen corporate sponsors including AECOM, Century Engineering, Delaware Solid Waste Authority, GPI, JMT, Pennoni, Pullman Masonry & Concrete, TY Lin International, Wallace and Montgomery, Whitman, Requardt and Associates, and Whiting Turner along with our alumni and friends came out in support our student academic excellence awards given each year to a deserving freshman, sophomore, junior and senior.

Phil Horsey, class of ’97, and Pennoni Senior Engineer and Project Manager said, “Pennoni is proud of our efforts 10+ years ago working with Tripp [Shenton] and UD CEE to create the first [department] Alumni Golf Outing. We look forward to continuing our sponsorship … because it provides an opportunity for alumni to re-engage with CEE as an industry through a fun day of fellowship.  This year was another highlight of our collective efforts … to raise money for future scholarships.”

For the spring 2019 Celebration of Academic Honors, funds raised by the golf outing were awarded to four of our best students, Freshman, Maya Eley, Sophomore, Taira Baldauf, Junior, Vanessa Huber and Senior, Shailja Gangrade. Shailja, an Environmental Engineering major was awarded the prestigious, National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and pursue her doctorate in the fall at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Graduate students Will Baker, Tingting Zhu, Mingjun “Gabe” Shao, and Prosper Kosi Anyidoho manned the competition holes for “roll the dice” and for the putting green competition. Our putting green winner was Austin Malkin. Longest drive went to Mindy Layborne for the women and Kevin Rafferty for the men with Kevin Sieben with a shot closest to the pin on the second hole.  Awards were handed out to our first place foursome, Matt Buckley, Todd Oliver, Matt Vincent and Bill Williamson; Second place to Tom Banez, Bill Conway, Steve Penoza and Jim Satterfield; third place to Josh Fanelli, Josh George, Frank Lerro and Mike Palotas. A dozen plus raffle prizes were also given out at the event. Our big ticket raffle winner was Stefan Rukowicz ’04, who took home a UD Stadium Chair, Alumni Sweatshirt, UD travel mug, a ticket package including four tickets to three individual UD sporting events for the 2019-2020 season and four tickets to a musical event, “School of Rock,” performed by UD’s Community Music School.

Many thanks to all our Alumni and Friends! See you in 2020!