In an interview after their win she stated, “My parents will probably say I knew you would win. They expect the best of me and coming on the race and not winning would not be the best. My parents definitely have an expectation for me to be perfect, and achieve the best be the brightest, smartest, fastest student.  Hopefully, we showed them that we, Ernie and I, really are a great team.”

It took traveling across 4 continents, 20 cities and nearly 40,000 miles for Cindy and Ernie win and through it all they were poised, confident, and masters of their fate – true champions.

Cindy wrapped up the experience, reflecting, "This race really was worth more than a million dollars. The beautiful things that we’ve seen, the cultures that we’ve experienced, the people that we met along the way, you can’t put a price tag on that. It’s really been an incredible, incredible experience.”

Expanding their horizons beyond those generally encountered in Construction Management, seniors Shane Headmond and William Lucas have taken their talents to audiences through a different and growing media - internet radio.

Headmond and Lucas began their talk show entitled “Here’s the Thing” on Bearcast Radio, UC’s on- campus radio station in January 2011.  The framework of their show was a comedic/talk show interview setup with guests ranging from writers for the Conan O’Brien Show to hosts from VH1’s Best Week Ever. 

When asked why they started their show Lucas joked, “We thought we were funny, why wouldn’t other people.” The team is right on the money with their comedic skills.  They really are funny!  The show was becoming a hit and the hilarious duo copyrighted their show name and established a presence through their social media sites.  With months of experience and  many hours of air-time under their belt, Headmond and Lucas experienced even more of the business world.

“Our advisor called us, after he had been contacted by a lawyer from New York Public Radio,” said Headmond.  The lawyer informed the team that NPR wanted to have a co-existing contract where New York Public Radio could also use the title “Here’s the Thing”, and the engineering team would be allowed to continue their show using the same name.  After much consideration, the team refused to agree to the terms and went on with their show.

 Not long after, the New York Public Radio lawyers were back with a “sweet buy out” deal that the students could not refuse.  For a nice financial settlement, Headmond and Lucas sold the show name to the NPR radio station and promptly renamed their comedy show “No Disrespect”.

 It wasn’t until after the settlement that the students received word that the host of a show with their old name would be, none other than the equally entertaining and acclaimed Alec Baldwin.  Headmond and Lucas continue on with their radio show, which you can hear on Tuesdays at 8 pm on UC’s Bearcast network.  Both are graduating in June and have jobs waiting.

Joining the CEAS headliners is Scott Fink, a freshman in the Electrical Engineering ACCEND program.  Scott has tapped into the exponentially growing social media field with his “Snow Day Calculator” application.

Fink, along with a high school classmate who is now a student at William and Mary College, made their mobile app while enduring a normal hot, muggy Ohio valley summer.   Fink decided to plan ahead to colder times, fun in the snow and no school.  Capitalizing on their technical prowess and the ever fluctuating Ohio weather, Fink and his partner created the ultimate app for winter. 

What more do students want than to know they could potentially have a snow day?  That is just what the app does!  “The Snow Day Calculator popped into my head, and we started writing the algorithm and developing graphics,” says Fink.

The app  Embed this Videopredicts whether classes will be cancelled by winter weather by combining snowfall predictions with other factors to give users a percentage-based prediction of whether they will have class or not.  “We waited until December to release the app because we wanted it to be well timed,” says Fink, and well-timed it was.   The app, which costs 99 cents and is available on iPhone and Android devices, has downloaded in waves based on storms.  ”… But with this past storm we surged up over 200 downloads in about a month. We were as high as 26th in the Apple App Store weather rankings on January third.”   

The biggest challenges Fink described as learning Java, XML and Objective-C formats for development of the app. 

The team faced competition for the app idea right off the bat.  Fink explained, “Someone copied our idea about a week after us and came out with a similar app for $1.99. So, we have had to effectively market the app and prove that ours is just as good or better for less money. It has been extremely rewarding to see some real results from our hard work.  It's important to translate learning into real world experience.”

Aside from creating mobile applications, Fink and his partner Matt Sniff, are making opportunities for themselves on the Internet. “Matt and I are kind of taking things into our own hands,” says Fink.   “We have already made a website called photorankr.com.  It’s a place for amateur photographers to have their work shared and rated. Then it uses an algorithm to rank which ones are "trending" the most at any given moment.”

In addition, Matt has released collegecambio.com at William and Mary and Fink hopes to expand it to UC soon.  This is a website where “students can not only buy and sell textbooks, they can buy and sell just about anything else, talk about professors and classes, arrange rides home, or anything else they could possibly need,” says Fink. 

CEAS students and alumni are taking many paths through the media jungles using their skills, poise and creativity to fashion unique identities.  True to engineering, they are transforming the way we view the world… and each other.