Members of Cal Poly’s Society of Civil Engineers (SCE) wowed judges at the annual Pacific Southwest Regional Symposium hosted by Cal State Northridge and placed first overall at this year’s competition.
The symposium is a three-day long engineering event that is broken up into 10 technical competitions and 11 nontechnical competitions, ranging from racing a concrete canoe they constructed to presenting technical papers.
Eighty-three Cal Poly SCE students competed at this year’s event against 14 other student chapters from universities from Southern California to Hawaii.
Seven of Cal Poly SCE’s technical teams placed in the top three. Technical teams usually begin working on their projects in the fall quarter and compete at the end of the winter quarter.
Cal Poly SCE President Gabe Denson (civil engineering) took part in two technical events and was the transportation lead for one.
“For the sustainable solution event, our team was tasked to redesign a city block following the Envision rating system,” Denson explained.
Envision provides a consistent framework for assessing infrastructure, according to the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.
“My role was to reconfigure and enhance an existing roadway and parking conditions to promote multimodal transportation, perform earthwork calculations and prepare a budget for our proposed design,” Denson described.
The concrete canoe team was one of Cal Poly’s first-place wins. Their goal is to apply lessons from the mechanics of materials and structures classes to design and race a canoe that is less dense than water. Senior Heather Migdal (civil engineering) led the group.
The team will represent Cal Poly at the American Society of Civil Engineers National Concrete Canoe Competition this month where they hope to win their seventh national title.
Cal Poly’s Timber-Strong Design Build team and the ASCE Construction Institute also earned first place in their categories. The Timber-Strong Design Build team was led by civil engineering seniors RJ Haugen and Kady Tanaka, while junior Andrew Rasas (civil engineering) led the ASCE Construction Institute team.
“The team worked well together, and knowledge gained from prior construction internships helped us place first in our competition,” Rasas said.
Cal Poly SCE has placed in the top three in the competition for 30 years. Some of the team members attributed Cal Poly’s civil engineering curriculum with giving them the practical experience needed to succeed in the technical competitions.
“Seeing everyone’s hard work pay off is one of the best feelings,” Denson shared. “One of my favorite parts about this conference is the opportunity to apply classroom knowledge to real-world experiences.”
Cal Poly SCE members plan to compete at the next regional event at the University of Hawaii in 2024.
In addition, the Innovation Contest Team will compete at the National Innovation Contest in Chicago, Illinois in October 2023.
If you would like to support Cal Poly’s Society of Civil Engineers, please email Anubhav Dawadi at president.cpsce@gmail.com.
By Taylor Villanueva
