Articles

President's Message - May 2017

This month our Branch President, Frank Pugsley, gets a month off from running our monthly board meeting and luncheon! Every year ASCE Dallas sets aside the month of May as Younger Member Month. The goal of Younger Member Month is to celebrate our Branch’s younger members while also challenging them with the duties and responsibilities that are typically handled by the President, President-Elect, Vice-President, and other board members. As Branch Director, I will do my best to fill-in for Frank alongside all of our other Younger Member volunteers. For those of you that don’t know, the Younger Member designation is bestowed upon our members who are 35 years of age and under, and I have the utmost confidence that our Branch’s Younger Members will be more than up to the challenge this month.

This year’s Younger Members have a huge step up on running the meeting as we already have two YMs, including myself, serving on the Board along with a few others serving in chair positions. This month specifically, the Younger Members volunteered at our Branch Golf Tournament which benefits the G.B. Mann Scholarship. There will also be a YM Happy Hour on May 19^th at 9pm at San Francisco Rose on Greenville Avenue. Please come out to join us!

We will also have some very special guests in attendance at the Branch luncheon with ten students from our Civil Engineering Club at Woodrow Wilson High School and our G.B. Mann Scholarship recipients joining a number of Younger Members at the front row of tables. The CE Club students will be visiting the luncheon as part of their day-long field trip that also includes a visit to the offices of Pape-Dawson Engineers and a construction site tour with Kimley-Horn Associates. The scholarship recipients will be formally recognized by the Branch at the meeting, and we invite you to join us in celebrating the amazing accomplishments of these students.

Finally, we’d also like to let you know that on June 3^rd, the Dallas Branch will partner with the National Society of Black Engineers DFW Chapter to host the Dallas Premiere of the ASCE Dream Big IMAX Film at the Perot Museum.  The theater holds 297 people and we would love to fill it with ASCE members, guests, and future engineers from the Girl Scouts and DISD STEM participants.  Information on how you can attend will be distributed in the coming weeks.  The event will begin at 11am with hands-on engineering activities and the actual movie screening is at 2:15PM.  Following the movie we will have a question and answer session for pre-college students with local engineers.

At this month’s luncheon, we are happy to welcome Dr. Mo Najafi from the University of Texas at Arlington to speak about a TxDOT research project on underground freight tunnels. More information on the main speaker and this month’s technical seminar can be found in the newsletter.

See you at the Crowne Plaza Addison on May, 8^th, 2017!

Jonathan Brower, PE
Branch Director
ASCE Dallas Branch, 2016-2017