BlackboardRegional engineering competition features concrete canoes, skee ball
The civil engineering students at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez take what they do very seriously, especially when it comes to competing.
But then again, so do all of the civil engineering students in the American Society of Civil Engineers Southeast Student Conference.
"Any student willing to get out of bed at 4 and 5 in the morning to haul out concrete canoes — that's enthusiasm," said Michelle Rambo-Roddenberry, Florida State University assistant professor and faculty advisor for conference planning.
The conference began Thursday at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, this year's host school. Activities continued through Saturday with events at The Rez on Lake Bradford Road.
To participate in this year's conference, students from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez had to ship their canoe and bridge three weeks in advance. And while the group of about 43 students did fundraising, they each still paid about $500 to $700 to be at the conference.
"We take it very seriously," said Mayra Martinez, UPRM 4th year civil engineering student and concrete canoe co-captain. "And we are very competitive. But we have a lot fun."
"It's really fulfilling after doing a hard year's work to come out," she added. "And its a great opportunity to learn from the other schools and have them learn from us."
The conference only makes its way to the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering about every 10 years, Rambo-Roddenbberry said, because the schools rotate the responsibilities. There are 25 schools in the Southeast region.
"Some of the schools pass up on the opportunity because of the planning involved, the financial obligation and you have to have the venue to host all of the events," she said. "We started planning for this year's conference last March."
"This is extremely important," she added. "Especially given that the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering program is still a relatively new program — it's a little more than 27 years old — so our program isn't as old and well-established as some of the other programs in the state. So this is good for memories. But it's good for visibility and marketing."
The schools are spread out through Puerto Rico and four states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. All came out to participate — which brought in about 900 students and volunteers.
There were about 14 competitions for the students during the conference, Rambo-Roddenbberry said. Almost all of the competitions were in some way related to civil engineering. And as the host school, some of the competitions also were closely related to what is taught in the FAMU-FSU program, such as transportation, structures and hydraulics.
Competitions included building a functional 24-foot steel bridge display; skee ball games and hydraulic rocket launching — all of which, like the concrete canoes, had to be prepared in advance. Engineering students constructed the canoes to float in water, and male, female, and co-ed teams tested the boats in 100-meter sprints and 400-meter endurance races, displaying the canoes' lightness and durability, respectively. Participants also wrote a paper on ethics and globalization. One of the last activities was a nontechnical game of ultimate frisbee infused with engineering trivia.
The FAMU-FSU ASCE student chapter has about 115 members. Seventy of them were out at the event as well.
"It's pretty awesome," said Mike Perez, FSU civil engineering senior and concrete canoe captain. "It lets us get more involved in civil engineering and exposes us to team-building activities and leadership roles."
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