Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

A Lawrence Tech senior project team captured first place in the entrepreneurial mindset competition held March 31 during the KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurial Education Network) Regional Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education at Mercer University in Macon, GA.

Matt Calahan, Nancy LaBelle, and Rory Walters took first place among 13 entries with their presentation of the Shingle Shucker, a machine that removes both nails and shingles from a roof.

The Shingle Shucker is a pneumatic-powered tool that removes asphalt roofing shingles.  It is designed to reduce the intensive labor involved in the traditional manual method of removing shingles. This tool has a single handle with a thumb-operated button that activates an air cylinder to push a flipper that pulls up on the shingle and pulls out the nails.

The Shingle Shucker is powered by an air compressor that is standard equipment for most roofing jobs.

The KEEN Regional Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education, which is sponsored by the Kern Family Foundation, focuses on bringing faculty, staff, and students from KEEN schools together to discuss collaboration in teaching, design projects, exchange of faculty and students, collaboration between administrators, faculty, and students, and joint student workshops and innovation competitions.

This is the first time Lawrence Tech has won the innovation competition. Ken Cook, chair of the Department of Engineering Technology, was the team’s faculty adviser.

“These students worked really hard and they have developed a product that is going into production,” Cook said. “That is the ultimate goal of engineering technology senior projects.”

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