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Creative SUNY Canton Calculator Engineers Honored by HP

  Hewlett Packard (HP) recently announced that six SUNY Canton students swept five runner-up categories in the recent nationwide "Create-a-Calculator Contest." "The Create-a-Calculator Contest provides students a first-hand opportunity to directly impact the design of current and future HP calculators," said Fred Valdez, General Manager of the Calculator Division, Personal Systems Group at HP in a prepared statement. "The contest provides HP an excellent venue to better understand unique student requirements. We give every entry serious review and use this knowledge to continue providing students with the best calculators possible."

HP and Scholastic publishing began holding this competition in 2003 as a way to encourage students to become inventors by designing an original product that was both visually appealing and functional, according to HP. The contest had more than 200 total calculator entries in high school and college-level categories.

Michael J. Newtown, SUNY Canton Mechanical Engineering Technology Assistant Professor, had one of his classes enter the competition as part of a project. "I was really impressed," Newtown said. "Each student made computer generated drawings and wrote a three-page description of their calculator design. Each one was very original and the students really put a lot of thought into the project."

Each of the six students who submitted the five calculator entries from SUNY Canton received a HP 49g+ Graphing Calculator. They will also receive letters of recommendation from both HP and the American Society of Civil Engineers. The designs ranged from dual-screen graphing calculators, to calculators that fold open for use like a laptop computer. Most of the proposed calculators utilized computer connection cables, allowing users to connect their calculator to their computer, in the same fashion as an HP printer, Newtown said.

The SUNY Canton Students who were runners up in the 2005 HP and Scholastic Create-a-Calculator contest include:

• Daniel P. Lupone, a SUNY Canton Civil Engineering Technology major from North Syracuse, who was first runner up with his HP CX1 Graphing Calculator entry. Lupone is a 2004 graduate of Cicero North Syracuse High School.
• Darren Colby, a SUNY Canton Engineering Science Technology major from Norwood, was second runner up with his HP 49G+ Triple Graphing Calculator entry. Colby is a 2003 graduate of Norwood-Norfolk Junior-Senior High School.
• Timothy Vollmer, a SUNY Canton Engineering Science Technology major from East Syracuse, was third runner up with his HP Multi-Purpose Graphing Calculator entry. Vollmer is a 2004 graduate of East Syracuse-Minoa Central High School.
• Jacob W. Gates, a SUNY Canton Individual Studies major from Gouverneur, was fourth Runner up with his HP 3000 entry. Gates is a 2000 graduate of Gouverneur Central Junior-Senior High School.
• Brian Tulip, a SUNY Canton Individual Studies major from Russell, and Andrew Conant, an Individual Studies major from Canton took fifth runner-up with their team HP Calculator entry. Tulip is a 1998 graduate of Edwards-Knox Central School and Conant is a 2004 gradate of Hugh C. Williams Senior High School.

September 19, 2005

Media inquiries should be directed to Gregory Kie, Media Relations Coordinator, or call 315/386-7527.

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