From concrete canoe races on Lake Herrick to steel bridge construction outside the Driftmier Engineering Center and two-story wood structure building at the Intramural Fields, the University of Georgia campus was buzzing with engineering-related activity this spring.
From March 6 to 8, the UGA College of Engineering hosted more than 700 students representing 19 universities from Florida, Georgia and Puerto Rico for the American Society of Civil Engineers Southeast Student Symposium. The conference was supported by nearly 150 judges and volunteers.
The days were packed with competitions, professional and personal development opportunities and networking as a celebration of civil engineering and the ASCE community. The ASCE Southeast Student Symposium is one of 19 regional student symposia held annually as a celebration of civil engineering and the ASCE community. This is the first time the University of Georgia has hosted a symposium since the UGA chapter’s founding in 2015.
“Hosting the ASCE Student Symposium was a great honor,” said Stephan Durham, interim dean of the College of Engineering and co-faculty advisor for the ASCE UGA chapter. “Many hours of intense planning and preparation went into this conference. I am very proud of our chapter.”
ASCE is an engineering society devoted to advancing technologies, encouraging lifelong learning, promoting professionalism and the civil engineering profession, developing civil engineering leaders and advocating for infrastructure and environmental stewardship. The UGA ASCE chapter has quickly established itself as a strong student-led chapter with a high level of membership and activity in one of the fastest-growing programs in the College of Engineering.
UGA ASCE students lower their concrete canoe, Argo III, into Lake Herrick. (Photo by Lillian Ballance)
Perhaps the most anticipated highlight from the competition was the annual concrete canoe race. Since the 1960s, ASCE student chapters have competed to be the best at designing, constructing and racing concrete canoes. Over the years, canoe mixtures and designs have varied, but the long-established tradition of teamwork, camaraderie and spirited competition has remained constant.
The conference also included the annual Student Steel Bridge Competition, sponsored by both ASCE and the American Institute of Steel Construction. The competition challenges students to extend their classroom knowledge to a practical and hands-on steel design project that grows their interpersonal and professional skills, encourages innovation and fosters impactful relationships between students and industry professionals. Each student team develops a concept for a scale-model steel bridge to span approximately 20 feet and carry 2,500 pounds. The team must determine how to fabricate their bridge and plan for an efficient assembly under timed construction conditions at the competition. Bridges are then load tested, weighed and judged on aesthetics.
“Each university cheered on their teams and sang their fight songs in what turned out to be friendly competitions against one another with opportunities to apply their technical skills through hands-on design,” said Gokul Dev Vasudevan, UGA ASCE’s other co-faculty advisor.
The University of Georgia took home first place in the symposium’s cornhole competition. (Photo by Lillian Ballance)
In total, the symposium included 18 different competitions. The UGA chapter finished with two awards including first place in “Concrete Cornhole,” a competition in which students designed and built a concrete cornhole board to be judged and used in a double elimination bracket tournament, and third place in the society-wide Sustainable Solutions competition, in which students create a sustainability focused proposal in response to a real-world challenge.
