It was a disappointing moment when the members of the University’s Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) chapter took second place in the 2010 Midwestern ITE Collegiate Traffic Bowl competition late last month.

The six-member team, with three competitors and three alternates, had its hopes set on winning in Minneapolis on June 28 and advancing to the national competition, but only first-place winners get to move on.

“We had improved greatly from last year, which was the first year the competition was held in the Midwest,” said Kivanc Avrenli, graduate student in civil engineering.

“We got second last year too, but now we know that we really need to work even harder for next year.”

The competition’s objective was to study different information in the fields of transportation and civil engineering and then to answer Jeopardy-like questions about them, including special questions about entertainment.

Avrenli said it was hard to practice for the Traffic Bowl because most team members were graduate research assistants, but they tried to put in as much time as they could for a successful team.

For the team members though, it wasn’t as much about winning as it was about learning new information to help them in their career paths.

“We are all from different countries,” said Riaz Khan, graduate student in civil engineering. “Here at Illinois, we are able to get the best education and learn the most information through opportunities like this. Now we can bring this newfound knowledge back to out home countries to help us in our careers.”

Khan is originally from Pakistan and hopes to live and work there after college.

“I think that I can make more of a difference now that I have been exposed to this new information that not everybody knows about there,” Khan said.

The competition requires participants to look more critically into different traffic textbooks and manuals to find in-depth information.

“Even if I don’t move back, this information that I am learning could definitely help people from my home country of Iran,” said Seyed Mohammad Nourbakhsh, also a graduate student in civil engineering.

“I would want to at least share this information with them,” Nourbaksh added.

The group spent the greater part of the summer learning information for the event. During their ride to Minnesota, the group members quizzed each other on different information. They then took the trip as an opportunity to see the Midwest.

“I had never been to Minnesota before, so this was a good experience to see new sights that I could tell people back home about,” said Zengyi Yang, a graduate student from China.

“If I go back to live (in China), I want to have plenty of experiences to share and discuss.”

The team members not only learned new information, but took the time to specialize in different categories. They discussed and partially divided up research on the technical and general aspects of traffic engineering, transportation control, highway capacity and ITE facts.

“We tried to focus on whatever field we were the most interested in,” Nourbakhsh said. “Learning these specialities helped us become masters of the topics which will guide our futures.”

The teammates, all members of the ITE chapter at Illinois, are encouraging graduate students to become involved because it takes their knowledge to a new level.

“You can take a lot from this experience; it really brings students closer to the profession and to people from other areas,” Yang said.