Students representing five universities and college teams from across the U.S. put their standards negotiation skills to the test during the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) recent 3rd Standards Negotiation Simulation Competition held in Washington, DC. Facilitated by the ANSI Committee on Education, the event preceded conferences during World Standards Week 2018.
Teams from the City College of New York (CCNY), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), The University of Tampa, The University of Virginia (UVA), and The University of Maryland had a different role but a common challenge at the event: to develop a vehicle to vehicle (V2V) standard. The simulation was an opportunity for the students to partake in standardization development a process which may typically take months and multiple meetings. The exercise helped condense standardization development into just a few hours, with the support of collaborative briefings, and mentors on-hand to coach the students.
Judges from ASTM International, UL, San Jose State, the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the International Code Council (ICC), and staff from ANSI elected the student team from UVA as the winner. The winning students were chosen for their skills in strategy, collaboration, and negotiation, and ultimately, their ability to achieve their main objective in their standardization development role. Jeff Strauss, a professor at Northwestern University, led the team discussions for the day.
"During this event, it became apparent how much collaboration was needed during the standardization process," said Deke Lueker, an engineering student, and part of the winning UVA team, which also included Matthew David Dean, Tony Ge, Nathaniel Grevatt, and mentors Sean Ferguson and Tsai-Hsuan Ku (pictured). "The amount of non-technical debate surprised me, especially since autonomous vehicles seems like a very technical topic."
"We were so pleased with the successful outcome of the event, and it was great to see such exceptionally bright students from five top schools in the country putting their talents together to highlight standards development," said Lisa Rajchel, ANSI. "It's ANSI's hope to continue to engage these students and schools in the ANSI Federation and encourage their involvement in standardization activities and events."
ANSI's standards competition builds on the success of the previous simulations, and is part of ANSI's long-term effort to support and strengthen standardization education in the U.S. ANSI thanks the sponsors: John Deere, UL, ASTM International, International Code Council, IAPMO, American Dental Association, and NSF.
At the event, ANSI also announced its 2019 Student Paper Competition, which asks students to write about how standards help mitigate disaster. The competition is open to students who are enrolled full- or part-time in associate, undergraduate, or graduate programs during the period of September 2018 to April 2019 in U.S. higher education institution.
See related articles:
ANSI Announces 2019 Student Paper Competition: "How Do Standards Help Mitigate Disaster?"