Articles

CE Club Update

Civil Engineering Students from the University of Texas at Arlington

Derek Baker, Prapti Sharma, and Janie Santillan from the University of Texas at Arlington ASCE Student Chapter kicked off the 2015-2016 school year with the CE Club at Woodrow Wilson High School with a great presentation on college classes, networking and social opportunities within ASCE at a university, and college internships. Prapti, the current UTA ASCE President, highlighted the benefits of involvement in ASCE while in college. ASCE student members get the opportunity to visit local ASCE branch meetings, host their own on-campus meetings with professional guest speakers, attend technical and leadership conferences put on by ASCE National, participate in volunteer opportunities on and off campus, and participate in student competitions like concrete canoe and steel bridge. Derek and Janie, the captains of the concrete canoe and steel bridge teams, respectively, talked at length with the high school students about the two ASCE-sponsored competitions, including the challenges faced, friendships formed, and opportunities gained through these team competitions. Derek also showed off a nice video put together by the UTA Student Chapter for last year’s concrete canoe team and also passed around a concrete cylinder that was made of one of the test mixes for the concrete canoe. Finally, the UTA students shared their experiences of working as summer interns for a variety of engineering firms around DFW. Throughout the entire presentation, the prevailing message to the WWHS students was to fully embrace the college experience, network as much as possible inside and outside the engineering community, and to put forth one’s best effort in the classroom. There’s no doubt this was an important message to be heard by the high school juniors and seniors at WWHS that are considering studying civil engineering at the next level.