Engineering student wins Steve Golding Award

USQ student Kimberley Althaus recently won a Steve Golding Award

A USQ Engineering student was the proud recipient of a major prize at the recent annual Steve Golding Award ceremony.

Final-year Agricultural Engineering student Kimberley Althaus, who is based at the University’s Toowoomba campus, received the Encouragement Award for her project entitled: Effect of Irrigation Management on Nitrate Movement under a Lettuce Crop.

The Steve Golding award is for the best final year student project best final-year Engineering student project in technological management and/or innovation in engineering, and awarded annually by Engineers Australia.

The main component of the judging criteria is presentation, although marks were also awarded for a written report and a poster.

Steve Golding Award Organising Committee chair and USQ Engineering Senior Lecturer, Dr David Thorpe, said the Encouragement Award was effectively third prize in the competition.

'For this award, Kimberley had to submit a written report and poster (attached), which together counted for 50 marks, and make a 15 to 20 minute presentation (worth 100 marks) at the Hawken Auditorium in Engineering House in Brisbane,' Dr Thorpe said.

'Competitors came from a number of Queensland universities. USQ had five excellent presentations from our finalists, and Kimberley’s presentation was outstanding.

'She competed against other finalists from QUT and Griffith University. Kimberley made a complex research project seem quite simple and understandable to the audience and I commend her on her achievement.'

Kimberley’s project examined irrigation management practices and their impact on the leaching of nutrients and salts within a soil profile. Crops such as lettuce, which are highly dependent on irrigation water for their effective growth and high quality yield, are particularly susceptible to high levels of nutrient leaching below the root zone.

The aim of the project was to ascertain the effect of irrigation management on nitrate movement soil by collecting water and solute data from a sprinkler and drip-irrigated field of lettuce grown on a Ferrosol.

Contact Details:
Media Contact: Madeleine Tiller, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 1163 or 0400 025 429