KHS Students Win CAPS Contest

Kirkwood High School students Bradley Goodrum, Patrick Kramer, and Diego Sauer along with 10 other students from five other St. Louis Area schools were part of a St. Louis CAPS team winning the 8^th annual Gateway Arch National Park Engineering Contest. The team won 1^st place overall and was awarded a $1,500 prize.

The 2024 Contest, Engineering a Bridge from the Past to the Future, celebrates the 150^th anniversary of the Eads Bridge. As part of the celebration of James Buchanan Eads and his famed engineering feat, the Gateway Arch National Park Engineering Contest focused on the bridge that is the north boundary of the park.

This year’s contest required teams to design a pedestrian bridge that linked the park’s north overlook to the Eads Bridge.  This will require the high school teams to be very creative, and there will be numerous regulations and protocols to consider, and there will be an aesthetic component as well – the pedestrian bridge should be attractive and match the styles of the park and the 19th century cast-steel bridge.

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis hosted the Contest Final Presentations. They were viewed by a judge panel consisting of current & retired engineers, engineering professors, and Gateway Arch National Park officials judged the team’s executive summaries & pitches.