Concrete Canoe, Sustainable Solutions, and Surveying competition winners advance to ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships in June at Brigham Young University
Reston, Va. - Future civil engineers showed off the skills, knowledge, and perseverance that will help shape the future of cities and infrastructure worldwide at The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2024 Southeast Student Symposium hosted by the ASCE Florida Section in Orlando, FL on March 21–23. The competition featured more than 630 civil engineering students from 19 universities in Florida, Georgia, and Puerto Rico who used their academic and project management experience in a series of competitions that demonstrate the teamwork, critical thinking, and technical skills that are crucial to the civil engineering profession, including the Society's flagship student competition, ASCE Concrete Canoe.
ASCE's University of Florida student chapter won the Concrete Canoe competition and will advance to the Society-wide finals. Concrete Canoe teams spend months leading up to the competition working to design and build a canoe made entirely out of concrete that is capable of floating and racing against dozens of other competitors. The Society-wide finals, which include Concrete Canoe, the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition - Waterfront Revitalization, and the ASCE UESI Surveying Competition, will be hosted by Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, June 20–22.
Students from Georgia Institute of Technology won the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition, where teams are challenged to incorporate sustainable practices into real-world project scenarios that they will regularly face in their civil engineering careers. This year's competition required students to create a proposal to redevelop several parcels of waterfront land in a fictional city that was once a manufacturing hub using the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure's Envision framework to meet the city's sustainability goals.
The ASCE UESI Surveying Competition winner was the team from Georgia Southern University. This competition recognizes the importance of basic surveying principles to all civil engineering projects and ways to solve common problems they will encounter in the industry. In this competition, competitors completed a topographic mapping project and field tasks that are part of the surveying process.
The Timber-Strong Design Build Competition℠ winner was the team from Florida A&M University-Florida State University. This competition tasks students with creating a sustainable, 2-story wood light-framed building. This competition enables students to gain experience in performing crucial aspects of common structural engineering design and practice.
The ASCE Construction Institute Student Symposium Competition winner was the team from Georgia Institute of Technology. This competition tasks students with several real-world construction engineering challenges to which teams will be asked to provide written or diagrammatic responses as well as make an oral presentation to the owner.
In the AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction)/ASCE Student Steel Bridge Competition, students from The University of Florida will advance to the Society-wide finals. This competition requires students to develop and build a scale model steel bridge spanning approximately 20 feet and capable of carrying at least 2,500 pounds. The ASCE/AISC Student Steel Bridge National Finals takes place on May 31-June 1 at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana.
“The successful work of the winners of the ASCE Southeast Student Symposium shows their dedication to civil engineering in the classroom and in the field,” said Marsia Geldert-Murphey, P.E., President of ASCE. “These talented students are the future of the profession, and their work will have an impact that lasts generations. Good luck to all of them at the Civil Engineering Student Championships!”
For nearly 40 years, ASCE student chapters have been competing in the Concrete Canoe Competition. In addition to designing and building the canoes, students also formulate the concrete mixture using their own unique techniques to make the canoe float. The competition challenges civil engineering students to apply the engineering principles learned in the classroom to a real-world task, while utilizing project management and team building skills. The competition evaluates teams on design and construction, a technical proposal, a formal business presentation, and five different races—men's and women's slalom races, men's and women's sprint races, and a co-ed sprint race.
The ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships is organized by ASCE and hosted annually by a university student chapter, thanks in part to funds provided by the ASCE Foundation.
Participating schools at the Southeast Student Symposium
- Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
- Florida A&M University-Florida State University
- Florida Atlantic University
- Florida Gulf Coast University
- Florida Institute of Technology
- Florida International University
- Florida State University
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Georgia Southern University
- Kennesaw State University
- Mercer University
- Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico
- University of Central Florida
- University of Florida
- University of Georgia
- University of Miami
- University of North Florida
- University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez
- University of South Florida
About the American Society of Civil Engineers
Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers represents more than 150,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society. ASCE works to raise awareness of the need to maintain and modernize the nation's infrastructure using sustainable and resilient practices, advocates for increasing and optimizing investment in infrastructure, and improve engineering knowledge and competency. For more information, visit www.asce.org or www.infrastructurereportcard.org and follow us on Twitter, @ASCETweets and @ASCEGovRel.