Articles

MRLC 2018 Recap

2018 Multi-Region Leadership Conference – Omaha, Nebraska

Business Meeting

One of the main events at the MRLC every year is to hold a Business Meeting for the younger members. There are multiple purposes for this meeting, one purpose is to familiarize younger members who aren’t experienced with Parliamentary Procedure – Roberts Rules. The other main purpose of this meeting is to resolve the resolutions that younger members will submit for approval. The last and most important part of this meeting is to vote on a host city for the year 2020. The three resolutions brought to younger members to consider were Recommendations for Location of 2020 CRYMC, Recommendation for Younger Member Position on Board of Direction, and lastly Recommendation for Phased Membership Process. This meeting is a great platform to get Younger Members excited about the future or ASCE and get them thinking about the decisions that they will have to make someday and the process that they will have to go through to get to their end goal.

Community Service Event

While in Omaha the Younger Members had a chance to give back to the local community. As a break out session, the CRYMC helped cut and tie blankets that were donated to a local organization that helps hand out supplies to those that need a helping hand. Not only did we cut new blankets for those in need, we were also able to create tie blankets. The Omaha Younger Members also had gift bags for the attendees to fill with gift cards, stuffed animals and a few other items. Everyone teamed up to either create the tie blanket, fill the gift bags, or cut new blankets. It gave the attendee an opportunity to communicate and converse with fellow young members outside of a formal meeting setting. It also was a great chance to network with fellow and engineers in a setting that allowed for us to give back to the city of Omaha as well.

CRYMC Banquet @ Aquarium/Zoo

Saturday night was the Younger Members’ award banquet which was hosted at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and the Scott Aquarium. This was a very well put on event and included touring the zoo and aquarium. The zoo portion of the night included walking through the desert dome, which is the world’s largest glazed geodesic dome, amongst other zoo exhibits. A social hour in a 70-foot underwater tunnel through an aquarium holding sharks and rays was held prior to the dinner. This was a great event and provided ample opportunity to network with other ASCE branches, sections, and student chapters in Regions 3, 6, and 7.

At the awards dinner our very own Jonathan Brower was recognized as the “CRYMC Outstanding Younger Member in Community Activities”. Along with Jonathan, Jennifer Smith and Omar Venzor were recognized for their efforts in “Outstanding Community Volunteerism”.

ASCE Strategies

ASCE Section and Branch leaders had the opportunity to weigh in on the new ASCE Board of Direction’s key strategies for the coming years. Everyone was split up into small groups that rotated around the main conference room to different stations that featured each of the key strategies. These strategies included: Raise the Bar Initiative, ASCE Technical Committees, ASCE Younger Member recruitment and retention, and Education Outreach. Everyone was also encouraged to vote on the topics they felt were the most important using red dots to cast votes on the strategy boards.

Region 6 Break Out

Section, Branch, Younger Member, and Student Chapter leaders from Region 6 (New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) got the chance to network and share ideas and challenges during a region-specific break out session. It was a great thought-sharing session that hopefully builds a close knit network within Region 6 and makes the region stronger as a whole. Below is a picture of the entire Texas delegation at the MRLC:

Best Practices Break Out

There were five Best Practices Break Out sessions for conference attendees to sit in on. These were round table conversations hosted by various sections and branches that were sharing some of their local best practices including: government relations, Dream Big outreach, social media usage, student engagement, and section/branch milestone celebrations. The ASCE Dallas Branch Director, Jonathan Brower, hosted the social media session where he shared the strategies the Dallas Branch has been implementing to effectively connect with members via various social media platforms.

Lunch with President-Elect Kemper

During Lunch with President-Elect Kemper we learned of her journey of both being mentored along the way and her mentoring others.  Getting more involved with ASCE is something that she never thought much about, but multiple people kept asking if she thought about joining certain committees or running for offices.  After enough people asked, that prompted her to actually get more involved.  That stressed to me the need to encourage others to get more involved and jump into their ASCE journey. 

Personality & Leadership

During an interactive and introspective session, the section and branch leaders learned that leadership is defined as the art, science, and craft of influencing other people to achieve a common goal and improve an organization.  Using your personality type from the Myers Briggs, there are 4 dichotomies that form 16 Psychological types.  Using these types the expectations, motivators, and stressors for each type are different.  By using the personality types you can lead a team more effectively by knowing their preferences and motivations.

ASCE Resources

Section and Branch leaders went through a session covering the vast amount of ASCE Resources available to the section, branch, institutes, and members thru the Geographic Services Department.  Part of these include resources for running a great section or branch, pre-college outreach, continuing education, government relations, infrastructure report card, volunteer opportunities, member benefits, and official register.

Breakfast Coffee w/ President-Elect Nominees

During the breakfast with the two President Elect nominees (Louis Aurigemma and Kancheepuram Gunalan), audience members were encouraged to ask questions of both the delegates after they each made their opening remarks. Hot topics included how each delegate would work to increase infrastructure needs and awareness, increases accessibility to engineering programs at colleges, STEM outreach and promotion, the cost of college and how the delegates may work to reduce that cost, and how each delegate felt about the Raise the Bar initiative.  Both delegates were very open in their responses and encouraged to hear about how both student and professional members are passionate about the field of Civil Engineering and the promotion of said field.

Supercharge your Leadership Skills

This session was an adaptation of one of the training modules that is offered by ASCE nationally for use at the section or branch level. The goal of this session was to look at the leadership and management skills required. It covered three sections: knowing yourself, managing yourself, and leading others – all things that can benefit ASCE members within the organization and in their offices.

Presentation of Outstanding Branch Award

Under the leadership of 2016-2017 Branch President Frank Pugsley, the Dallas Branch won the prestigious Outstanding Brach Award for large sections and branches.  Current President Elect, Anthony Luce, was honored to accept this award at the Omaha MRLC on behalf of the Branch.  We were honored to have current National ASCE President Kristina Swallow present the award to the delegation from the Dallas Branch during the conference. 

Finally, the Dallas Branch is excited to be hosting the 2019 MRLC. We are going to need lots of volunteers! Please contact Anthony Luce ([email protected]) if you are interested in helping the Dallas Branch put on a great event!