Students whipped pies at professors, guzzled cups full of cottage cheese, and duct taped each… Students whipped pies at professors, guzzled cups full of cottage cheese, and duct taped each other to walls outside Benedum Hall last week, all in a celebration of engineering.

This year marked Pitt’s 50th Anniversary of E-Week participation. The National Society of Professional Engineers established the festivity to bring recognition and awareness to the engineering profession.

“Everyone knows what a doctor does, or what a lawyer does, and we want people to know what engineers do,” said Nathan Phillips, president of the Engineering Student Council. “We are surrounded by buildings, cars, engines — things that engineers have had a hand in.”

National Engineers Week was held from Feb. 22 to 28 this year, but because of midterms and Spring Break, Pitt decided to push E-Week festivities back a few weeks. According to Phillips, they try to schedule E-Week around St. Patrick’s Day, after they learned that he was the patron saint of engineering.

Planning for the week’s events actually begins at the start of the fall semester, when the ESC Executive Board selects the E-Week Chairs. These two students, with some help, are responsible for rule regulations, overseeing events, scheduling and more.

This year, Jane Haven and Chris Wilson, who both admitted that things get hectic, embraced the challenges.

“We don’t get much sleep,” said Wilson, who described the challenge of balancing the responsibilities.

This year’s 21 competitions included traditional events, such as “Pittopoly” and a Soap Box Derby, as well as new events, like a Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournament titled “Benedum Hold ‘Em.” Phillips, a civil engineer competitor, said that the game was intense, but still entertaining.

In fact, many of the events were intense. During an Olympic game of tug-of-war, the civil engineers dragged their opponents through the rain-soaked, muddy Cathedral lawn.

“It’s a lot of fun, and everyone wants to win,” Haven said.

But it’s not all fun and games. The first event, E-Day, was held on Thursday, March 18, at Frick International Academy, across Fifth Avenue from Towers. There, engineers educated the eighth graders about each department, as part of a community outreach program. This year the mechanical engineers showed off a Formula One car, the chemical engineers made “Gak,” and the civil engineers displayed a steel bridge. The Frick students judged this competition.

The final events entailed building floats overnight and parading them through Oakland, while performing skits to be judged by faculty members.

The Shamrock Ball, hosted at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel, capped off the week-long extravaganza with trophies handed out to the three highest-scoring teams

First prize went to the materials science engineers/engineering physics team. Not bad for the department with roughly 70 students enrolled, making it the smallest of the eight engineering departments. The industrial engineers took second place, with electrical engineering/computer engineering not far behind in third.

Next year, two new chair people will be selected and the process will begin all over again, but for now, the MSE department will bask in victory as this year’s E-Week champions.