Concrete Canoe, Sustainable Solutions and Surveying Competition winners advance to ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships in June at Brigham Young University

Reston, Virginia — Future civil engineers showed off the skills, knowledge, and perseverance that will help shape the future of cities and infrastructure worldwide at The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2024 Indiana-Kentucky Student Symposium at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, IN, April 11–13. The competition featured more than 330 civil engineering students from 13 universities in Indiana and Kentucky who used their academic and project management experience in a series of competitions that demonstrate the teamwork, critical thinking, and technical skills that are crucial to the civil engineering profession, including the Society's flagship student competition, ASCE Concrete Canoe.

ASCE’s Western Kentucky University student chapter won the Concrete Canoe competition and will advance to the Society-wide finals. Concrete Canoe teams spend months leading up to the competition working to design and build a canoe made entirely out of concrete that is capable of floating and racing against dozens of other competitors. The Society-wide finals, which include Concrete Canoe, the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition - Waterfront Revitalization, and the ASCE UESI Surveying Competition, will be hosted by Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, June 20–22.

Students from The University of Louisville won the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition, where teams are challenged to incorporate sustainable practices into real-world project scenarios that they will regularly face in their civil engineering careers. This year's competition required students to create a proposal to redevelop several parcels of waterfront land in a fictional city that was once a manufacturing hub using the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure's Envision framework to meet the city's sustainability goals.

The ASCE UESI Surveying Competition winner was the team from Purdue University Northwest. This competition recognizes the importance of basic surveying principles to all civil engineering projects and ways to solve common problems they will encounter in the industry. In this competition, competitors completed a topographic mapping project and field tasks that are part of the surveying process.

The ASCE Construction Institute Student Symposium Competition (pilot) winner was the team from Purdue University at West Lafayette. This competition tasks students with several real-world construction engineering challenges to which teams will be asked to provide written or diagrammatic responses as well as make an oral presentation to the owner.

The Timber-Strong Design Build Competition℠ Timber-Strong Design Build Competition℠ (pilot) winner was the team from Purdue University at West Lafayette. This competition tasks students with creating a sustainable, 2-story wood light-framed building. This competition enables students to gain experience in performing crucial aspects of common structural engineering design and practice.

The 3D Printing Competition 3D Printing Competition (pilot) winner was also the team from Purdue University at West Lafayette. The 2024 ASCE 3D Printing: Bridging the Future Competition focuses on bridges. Students are challenged to design an aesthetically-pleasing, strong, and stiff 3D printed bridge that will take the least amount of assembly time and meets the geometric requirements.

In the AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction)/ASCE Student Steel Bridge Competition, students from Trine University will advance to the Society-wide finals. This competition requires students to develop and build a scale model steel bridge spanning approximately 20 feet and capable of carrying at least 2,500 pounds. The ASCE/AISC Student Steel Bridge National Finals takes place on May 31–June 1 at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana.

“Congratulations to all the winners of the Indiana-Kentucky Student Symposium. The months of hard work by these future civil engineers is incredible to see,” said Marsia Geldert-Murphey, P.E., President of ASCE. “The experiences they have gained from ASCE competitions will help prepare them for their careers, and we wish them the best as they prepare for the Society-wide competitions.”

ASCE’s student competitions challenge student members to use the civil engineering skills they have developed in the classroom in real-world situations to utilize the project management and team-building skills that they will need in their civil engineering careers. Each competition in ASCE student symposia events is designed to help future civil engineers become better designers, problem solvers, proposal writers, and public speakers. Concrete Canoe also challenges students to formulate a concrete mixture and find unique ways to make the canoe float and be capable of racing.

The ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships is organized by ASCE and hosted annually by a university student chapter, thanks in part to funds provided by the ASCE Foundation.

Participating schools at the Indiana-Kentucky Student Symposium

  • Purdue University Northwest (host)
  • Marian University
  • Purdue University - West Lafayette
  • Purdue University Fort Wayne
  • Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
  • Trine University
  • University of Evansville
  • University of Kentucky
  • University of Louisville
  • University of Notre Dame
  • University of Southern Indiana
  • Valparaiso University
  • Western Kentucky University

About the American Society of Civil Engineers

Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers represents more than 150,000 civil engineers worldwide and is America's oldest national engineering society. ASCE works to raise awareness of the need to maintain and modernize the nation's infrastructure using sustainable and resilient practices, advocates for increasing and optimizing investment in infrastructure, and improve engineering knowledge and competency. For more information, visit www.asce.org or www.infrastructurereportcard.org and follow us on Twitter, @ASCETweets and @ASCEGovRel.