Rube Goldberg Competition: An Exploration of Nontraditional Problem Solving
Once a part of the Hofstra student body, there are a number of programs in the Department of Engineering to keep the spirit of competition and interest in the application of technology flowing. One such program is the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, sponsored by the professional engineering fraternity Theta Tau. Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, sculptor, author and engineer - famous for his "Inventions" cartoons that featured contraptions satirizing new technology. Inspired by those bizarre cartoons, this contest requires students to design a machine that uses the most convoluted process to complete a simple task assignment with a minimum of 20 steps - the more the better. The idea is to steer away from conventional problem solving. The standout years in Hofstra's longtime participation in this contest were when the University's team won first place in 1993 and 1994. In other exciting years Hofstra came away with second and third place honors.
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The 1994 champs of the Rube Goldberg competition with their winning entry: (L to R) Elaine DelToro '96, Nicholas Croce '95, Jamie Torres '96, Christopher Ashline '95, Gene Klimov '96, Scott Wurms '94, Nick Lundgren '95 and Diana Conti '95.
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Nicholas Croce '95, president of DOAR Litigation Consulting, recalls having been on
the '93 and '94 winning teams. "The Rube Goldberg competition is one of the greatest
personal and professional experiences I have ever had. I mark it as a pivotal point not
only in my education but in my professional career." Combining individual expertise, various engineering disciplines and assorted personalities on each 15-person team to
design and build a complex, 300-pound machine is "a major undertaking," he notes.
"Looking back, it's clear that the only way we were able to come in first place two years
running and second place the third year was to work together." In the process, he adds,
he learned "a tremendous amount of real-world engineering and the real world of
team dynamics."
The experience of meeting deadlines and staying within a preset budget, while also juggling school priorities and a personal life, he says, "gave me an incredible boost in entering my professional career. To this day, I use that experience to help me solve serious business problems in creative and positive ways."
A few years later, Chris Baldwin '00, now an electrical engineer with Robert Derector
Associates, also competed in the Rube Goldberg contest. He, too, remembers the experience as "a rewarding one, as it offered the opportunity to work with, bond and
share ideas with students from disciplines other than your own."
Professor Scores a Home Run for Engineering
In yet another unexpected turn for the study of engineering, Associate Professor Richard
Puerzer has brought his love of baseball into the classroom by finding a connection between baseball and industrial management.
He introduced baseball into his course work a decade ago, "basically because I myself became interested in statistics through baseball, back in high school." He believes that using baseball has enlivened his courses more so than would a conventional approach, "especially statistics management courses."
Team management, he continues, actually is "a multidisciplinary task requiring knowledge of statistics and mathematics as well as an understanding of the diverse areas of ergonomics, organizational behavior, and management theory" - all of which are
"prominent areas of study in the field of engineering, specifically in the discipline of
industrial engineering."
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