On Friday, April 29, 2016, Webb Institute’s students, faculty, staff, and administration celebrated Founder’s Day. Founder’s Day focuses on honoring and recognizing our founder, William H. Webb for his extraordinary vision and generosity. William Webb’s grand efforts have given hundreds of students the opportunity to obtain a great education in a truly unique way. Therefore, it has become a tradition to honor him by devoting one afternoon each year to repairing, reorganizing and beautifying Webb Institute’s historic campus.

During this year’s event, student’s planted flowers, repainted parking space lines, built a new table for the campus wood shop, cleaned the beach, repaired bicycles, maintained student whalers, demolished the Luckenbach patio, reorganized the library’s archives, cleaned the student kitchen and pub, painted a mural, and much more!

After all the hard work was done, everyone washed up, dressed in their formal wear, and headed to the Reception Room to enjoy the Annual Founder’s Day Banquet. The evening included great performances by the WooFs, a formal dinner, the traditional cutting of the cake, and an inspiring lecture by third generation Naval Architect and Marine Engineer, Mr. Bruce Rosenblatt. Mr. Rosenblatt gave words of wisdom to students, reflected on his inspiring career, and expressed his love and support for Webb Institute.

Founder’s Day Photo Gallery

View Founder’s Day Dinner Video 

View Founder’s Day Activity Video

Donald T. Bollinger served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in his family-owned business, Bollinger Shipyards, established in 1946; a full service marine construction and ship repair company.  He is now Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bollinger Enterprises, LLC, which in part serves as a family office.

He has employed Webb Institute student interns and graduates and has very generously contributed to Webb’s Mission and Strategic Plan. From 2006 to 2016, he served as a member of the Webb Board of Trustees, providing guidance, time, and talent; for that we will be forever grateful.

Mr. Bollinger has devoted time to professional and civic organizations, in addition to numerous boards and foundations – some but not limited to, the U.S. Coast Guard Foundation, National Petroleum Council, American Battle Monuments under the administration of President George W. Bush.  He was a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority and Bring New Orleans Back Commission, involved in the rebuilding of New Orleans and Louisiana after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Other organizations include the National World War II Museum, the Shipbuilders Council of America, the Nature Conservancy of Louisiana, the United Way of South Louisiana and the New Orleans Region of the Boy Scouts of America. He has received numerous awards for these activities.

Webb Institute will award Mr. Bollinger with an Honorary Doctor of Science degree and be the principal speaker at Webb’s commencement ceremony on Saturday, June 18, 2016.

On Saturday, April 19, 2016, Webb Institute hosted a Celebrity Casino Night. The special event was planned and organized by Webb’s Senior Class and Social Committee. To help prepare for the big occasion, about twenty students assisted in decorating the Reception Room with fake dice and paper flowers. Students attending the event dressed as celebrities—fictional or real—as best as they could, with impressive results! Celebrity guests from the famous Colonel Sanders and Willy Wonka to popular DJ, Skrillex, made special appearances. “Mocktails” and hors d’oeuvres were passed around at the event by some amazing student-volunteer waitresses. Seen standing guard outside the Reception Room were two bouncers, Lee and Carter from the Rush Hour movie series. Meanwhile, in the Reception Room, student dealers stood in wait for the games to begin.

In addition to the classic casino games like, Keno, Blackjack, Poker, Plinko Board, and Roulette, the main attractions included a Kentucky Derby Human Horse Race, a Sock’em Boppers Boxing Tournament, and a Zorb Ball Sumo Wrestling Match. At the end of the night, there was a silent auction where people could use the Webb currency they had won over the course of the event to bid on special prizes. Some lucky students walked away a Hawaiian shirt richer!

Webb Institute would like to thank the Casino Night’s local sponsors, Long Island Bagel Café, the Downtown Café, Glen Cove Theatre, Vito’s, Forest Pizza, Tex Mex, Sopah Thai, Rising Tide, and Strong Island Styles for helping to make the event so successful.

View Casino Night Gallery

On Saturday, March 26^th, Webb students visited the famous New York Auto Show at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. The show, which has taken place annually since 1900, featured almost 1,000 cars. Some of the big reveals this year include the updated Nissan GT-R, the new Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, the Miata-based Fiat 124 Spider, and the Audi R8 Spyder. Other cars on display included an Acura NSX, two Koenigsegg hypercars (a One:1 and a Ragera), a Bugatti Veyron, a Viper ACR and a Ford GT (which was revealed at the same show the previous year). More low-profile reveals include Ford’s new F-series heavy duty trucks, a Lincoln Navigator concept, and the Alfa Romeo Guilia sedan. The students got the opportunity to see all of these, as well as sit in many of the cars, like the new Mazda Miata and the Dodge Challenger Hellcat. The Mercedes and Ford booths where particularly crowded, and the most popular cars on display where by far the Koenigsegg’s.

Alex Holt, an exchange student from Webb’s Southampton exchange program, got the opportunity to snap some fantastic photos of the cars on display. Also for Webb’s Marine Engineering-oriented students, engines with cross-sectional cuts were on display, like Ford’s “voodoo” mill, a 5.2-liter, flat plane crank v8 that powers the new Shelby GT350. Some modified cars were also on display on the lowest level, including Fast and Furious actor Sung Kang’s personal car and a wide-body Datsun 240z nick-named FuguZ.

Webb first appealed to me because of its practical confluence of math, science, and multi-disciplinary engineering. By the time I graduated in 2010, I was both deeply fascinated by the maritime industry as well as curious about what lay beyond it and what critical knowledge transfer was not making its way into or out of the industry’s scope.

I first explored the industry on a micro scale, simulating ship-wave interactions as a hydrodynamics engineer at Applied Physical Sciences. The problems we attacked were as focused as the vortex generation off a single skeg profile, and the applications of numerical methods and programming were engaging, extending on the math curriculum at Webb. A year later, I had the opportunity to study at MIT with Professor Hank Marcus ‘65 and switched gears to the macro scale, researching oil tanker markets and operations. Gaining a high-level perspective on the self-inflicted, high-risk cyclic nature of global shipping markets was eye-opening. In sum, both micro and macro were highly analytical and fulfilling, but left me conflicted about whether to pursue a career more grounded in physics or business. Read more…