Patrick Kurp, Engineering Communications
Two graduating seniors at Rice University have been awarded the 2018 leadership prizes from the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL).
Jacob Behling in chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) was given the 2018 Robert H. Parks, Jr. Prize for Excellence in Engineering Leadership. Andrew Gatherer in mechanical engineering (MECH) received the RCEL Engineering Leadership Award.
The Parks Prize is given annually to a senior who has displayed leadership as an undergraduate “both in and outside the classroom, and is recognized by faculty and peers as an exemplary leader.” For the last two summers, Behling has received internships with Anandarko Petroleum. From 2015 to 2017 he was part of an Engineers Without Borders team that built a water pumping station for a village in Nicaragua, and he now serves as vice president of Duncan College.
After graduation, Behling will go to work for Anandarko in Colorado. Clarence A. Miller, the Louis Calder Professor Emeritus in Chemical Engineering Research at Rice, wrote in his letter of recommendation: “He is one of the best undergraduate students we have ever had in the lab, certainly in the top five percent.”
Behling will receive a cash prize of $3,500 and recognition in the Rice Commencement Program.
The RCEL Engineering Leadership Award goes to a senior “whose qualities of character, leadership and responsibility have been outstanding during their undergraduate years at Rice.” Gatherer is co-founder, propulsion team lead and design lead for Rice Eclipse, which has designed and tested hybrid rocket engines. In 2016, he worked as a student intern at Space Exploration Technologies in Hawthorne, Calif.
“During his time at Rice,” wrote Matt Elliott, lecturer in MECH, “Andrew has been a major driver behind the success of the student rocketry group Rice Eclipse, which has grown into one of Rice’s premier engineering student organizations. He is also an important member of the engineering community at Rice, primarily through his active participation in the Mechanical Engineering Student Advisory Board.”