Scholar Stories: McCann Successfully Bridging Gap Between Pool, Classroom
11/15/2017 10:00:00 AM | Women's Swimming & Diving, Features
Continuing the popular series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Prairie Farms.
A Rubik's Cube can be frustrating to solve. Every time you think you've made progress on one side, flip it over and you'll see that you've still got a long way to go.
Carolyn McCann figured it out as a fourth grader. Now she can do it in under 90 seconds.
Want to see @cmccann263 solve a Rubik's Cube in under 90 seconds? #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/jGwx07VP2V
— Michigan Swimming & Diving (@umichswimdive) November 15, 2017
"I enjoy solving problems, seeing how things work," said McCann, a senior captain on the University of Michigan women's swimming and diving team. "I do well in my classes because I enjoy my classes, and I enjoy the homework assignments. That's the nerd in me."
McCann is enrolled in the College of Engineering and will graduate next fall with a degree in civil engineering. Balancing an engineering course load with the demands of being a swimmer isn't easy, particularly when it comes to practice.
Some of her prerequisites are only offered once-a-semester and in some cases, only once-per-year. On Tuesdays last fall, she would go to morning practice, take the bus up to North Campus, come back to the pool and do the afternoon workout on her own (without her teammates), go back up to North Campus and then come back for dryland.
Unsurprisingly, it made for long days. If not for some flexibility on the part of her coaches, she'd be looking at an even longer stay in Ann Arbor.
Not that she's complaining. The University of Michigan has given McCann everything she's wanted in a student-athlete experience: a championship-winning team, immeasurable educational opportunities and exciting career prospects. Last year as a junior, she helped the women's swimming and diving team win their second consecutive Big Ten title, achieved a near-perfect GPA and scored an internship with the bridge design team at Tetra Tech in Brighton.
"I got this internship through a career fair at the College of Engineering," she explained. "There are so many amazing opportunities and career fairs, especially for student-athletes. And then there's M-PACT, who helped build my resume, create a cover letter and get in contact with people. Michigan is really special in that it provides resources for you to succeed."
There's something about bridges that have always interested McCann. She grew up in Gig Harbor, Washington, a short drive across the Puget Sound from Tacoma. Over the inlet is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first version famously known as "The Galloping Gertie" due to its propensity to sway back and forth in strong winds. It collapsed in 1940, a little over four months after it was completed.
It was rebuilt and reopened in 1950, while a twin went up in 2007. McCann got to see its progress firsthand, driving across it on a daily basis in order to get to her club practices.
With Tetra Tech, McCann learned computer monitoring, taking real-life specifications of bridges and transferring them into a computer program. She looked at old bridge designs and would calculate how much weight it could hold, termed "load rating." From there, the dimensions would be put into a program and simulations would be run using different vehicles to test the weight on certain parts of the bridge.
She also went out into the field on a few occasions to perform bridge inspections. One of those inspections led to a bridge being closed because it was unsafe.
Carolyn McCann got to put her engineering knowledge to use as she went out on bridge inspections during her internship.
"With bridges, you do one of two things -- completely tear it down or rehab it," she explained. "When you rehab it, you have to know what's already there. You might be keeping the substructure, which is everything underneath what you're driving on. The deck, the pavement, might be in bad shape, but in reality, that's not a big issue. It's just needs to be repaved. There's nothing wrong with its structural integrity."
"A lot of these bridges were built in the '50s and '60s and you might wonder, 'How are they still standing?' In reality, the engineering hasn't changed all that much. Being with Tetra Tech, it was such an amazing learning experience. What I learned in class, I applied to the real world."
Speaking of class, McCann is enrolled in three upper-level engineering courses this semester, including Matrix Structural Analysis and Construction Contracting. She's also enrolled in an Independent Study, continuing work that began two summers ago through a research-based internship program called SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering).
The lab she works in is helmed by Professor Jason McCormick. Alongside two Ph.D. students, the lab studies hollow steel beams and their use in structures that are susceptible to earthquakes. They experiment by filling tubes with different types of foams to see if they can absorb some of the energy from a potential earthquakes. McCann's role is to test different steels and foams to see how strong they are.
After finishing up undergrad, McCann plans to pursue a masters in structural engineering. And as for her career, with her academic portfolio, chances are she'll be in demand.
"The other thing with bridges," she says, "is that there are always going to be there, and they're always going to need to be fixed."
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