Competitions let civil engineering students test their design skills
By Web Staff
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MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — The annual American Society of Civil Engineers’ concrete canoe competition took place Saturday at Dog River Park.
The event was part of the American Society of Civil Engineers Gulf Coast Regional Symposium. This was the first year the University of South Alabama hosted the event. More than 400 civil engineering students from 15 universities in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi competed.
In Saturday’s competition, the teams designed concrete canoes and raced others to see whose was the fastest. They were judged on how well their mixed design is, how strong they are and how pretty it looks. The overall winner gets to go to the national competition.
Eric Steward, associate dean of undergraduate affairs for USA’s College of Engineering, said the reason behind promoting this event in Mobile is twofold.
“We’re just trying to promote not only the region in Mobile because we need more engineers in the area, but also we want to promote young kids from around the region to be interested,” Steward said. “If you love math and science, that’s what engineers do. We bring those two together and we solve problems we design.”
On Friday, the students took part in a steel bridge building competition.
South Alabama, Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, UNO, Louisiana Tech and Alabama A&M were among the universities represented in the three-day event.
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