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Senior engineering major wins the 2002 Region 1  ASME award for  "SkimmerCAT" design

A revolutionary sailboat design that has been turning heads in the boating industry recently garnered a Trinity senior one of the nation’s top collegiate engineering awards.     Jonathan Amory ’02, an engineering major with a concentration in mechanical engineering, won the 2002 Region 1 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) “Old Guard Oral Competition” in April. Amory’s presentation of his senior design project, “SkimmerCAT,” was chosen as the best student design project presentation in a competition that drew students from all over the northeast, including students from MIT, Northeastern University, Boston University, University of Connecticut, and University of Hartford. Amory won a trip to New Orleans where he will compete in November against the winners of the other 10 regions in the United States.     “I think it’s the best presentation I've seen in the 12 years I’ve attended the ASME competitions,” says Associate Professor of Engineering John Mertens. “Jon showed that engineering students at Trinity are doing work at as high a level as any engineering school in the country.”

LEARNING		Ryan Bak '03
		Embodying the ideal of the scholar-athlete

Anyone familiar with the record of four-time All-American Ryan Bak ’03 might wonder what the secret is behind this fleet-footed scholar-athlete, who, in the past year, has dominated Division III and Division I competition, while breaking five Trinity running records.

“I wonder the same thing myself,” Bak says, with characteristic modesty. “I think some of it has to do with just blocking out pain in my mind while I’m running. In reality, that’s one of the keys to running.”

For Bak, what started in high school as a second sport to soccer, has become a way of life that he claims has “taken me a lot of places.”      

“Ryan is exactly what Division III athletics are all about,” says Head Cross-Country Coach George Suitor. “He’s a great student, a great kid, and a great athlete.” Suitor describes Bak’s development since coming to Trinity as “phenomenal.”

A “winner” in the classroom

Bak is no less impressive in the classroom. A double major in economics and political science, Bak has earned NESCAC All-Academic honors four times, and was named by Trinity as the Junior Scholar Athlete of the Year. Bak was also recently inducted into the Connecticut Chapter of the Pi Gamma Mu social science honor society.

Professor of Political Science Clyde McKee invited Bak to be his teaching assistant in his fall 2002 “American National Government” class, partly, McKee says, because “he’s a winner in the best sense of the liberal arts tradition.

“He has his heart set on becoming an Olympic runner and he also has the desire to be the CEO of a major company, and he sees a connection between learning to communicate effectively and achieving those goals,” McKee says.

Formative college decisions

As a high school senior in his hometown of Suffield, Connecticut, Bak was offered athletic scholarships by Division I colleges and universities with strong athletic programs. But Bak parted ways with many of his friends and competitors who went on to Division I programs.

“I figured academics and a good degree would get me further in life than running would, alone.”

While Bak celebrates his decision to attend an academically minded liberal arts college, he admits that maintaining the balance between athletics and academics can be an ongoing challenge.

“It’s difficult, because I’m following a Division I-style program in my personal training, and it’s tough when you have a real workload of real classes at a good school like Trinity,” he says.

Bak says he plans to pursue a professional running career for between two and five years after he graduates from Trinity in 2003 “just to see how far it can take me.” During that time, he hopes to participate in an Olympic development program. Eventually, Bak says, he hopes to work in the financial sector. In the meantime, he uses his summers to prepare for that possibility, interning at the Simsbury, Connecticut, based Landmark Partners investment firm.

“He’s going to be successful at whatever he does,” Suitor says.

While has his eyes on winning the national cross-country championship during his senior year, his general plan is to remain “as competitive as possible” on the track and “be the best I can,” in the classroom.

“This year was quite a breakthrough year,” he says. “I never, ever imagined winning a national championship. That was something that kind of came out of the blue. Trinity has been a great experience as a whole, based on all the different people I’ve met and connections I’ve made, and that’s what Trinity’s all about.”

 –Michael Bradley