BlackboardCollege Hosts ASCE 150th Anniversary Student Conference
On April 4-6, the FAMU-FSU Student Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers hosted over 600 students, faculty, and guests from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico at the 2002 ASCE Southeast Regional Student Conference in Tallahassee. Themed ìDecades of Achievementî it coincided with ASCEís 150th Anniversary celebration. ASCE student members representing 25 southeastern universities spent the weekend in friendly competitions designed to build leadership and teamwork skills and put their engineering knowledge to work. Twelve competitions were held during the conference: the activities ranged from bowling with handmade concrete bowling balls to constructing steel bridges to racing concrete canoes. Several events coincided with the conferenceís historical theme. In both the T-shirt design and visual presentation competitions, teams were asked to commemorate the history of civil engineering over the past 150 years.
The conference organizing committee included conference chair Clea Rose Wootton, chapter president Dan Scheer, chapter vice-president Rebecca Jones, and faculty advisor Dr. Lisa Spainhour. ASCE chapter members and other students served as volunteers and 38 engineering and business professionals from Tallahassee and around the southeast served as judges. Most of the events on Friday were held at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering building, with the Steel Bridge competition at the nearby FDOT Structures Research Laboratory. The concrete canoe races were held on Saturday at the FSU Reservation. The concluding event was an Awards Banquet, held at the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center, which featured Linda Figg of Figg Bridge Engineers as the keynote speaker. Committee on Student Activities representative T. Bart Quimby spoke on behalf of ASCE, and conference chair Clea Rose Wootton presented over 90 trophies to the winning teams.Prof. Braswell In addition to hosting the conference, the FAMU-FSU chapter competed in most of the events. The chapter won first place in the surveying competition, led by Eric Dunning. In the cost estimating event, the team won second place under the leadership of Brian Kever. The concrete canoe team, headed by Brandon Ulmer, took third place in this multi-faceted competition, consisting of paper presentations, displays, product judging, and racing. The T-shirt design, produced by Brandon Ulmer, also won third place. The Visual Presentation display designed by Rebecca Jones won fourth place, and the chapter placed fourth in the GPS-based Mystery competition, headed by Stacy Jones. The chapter won the Second Place Overall trophy, an award accepted by Dan Scheer, Rebecca Jones, and Brandon Ulmer on behalf of the 27 student competitors.
