Students from Florida Tech will be among hundreds of U.S. and international civil engineering students competing at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Civil Engineering Student Championships this weekend at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.
Florida Tech’s team of Shaisha James, Alexandra Knodel, Maja Malarz, Veronica Montero-Sanchez, Sophia Sichtnik and Raelyn Stewart earned its championship ticket by winning first place in the in the Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute (UESI) Surveying Competition at the southeast regionals in March.
They will be joined on the trip by longtime faculty advisor Paul Cosentino, ASCE Florida Tech chapter past president Callie Siering, who graduated in May, alumnus Cole Stubbe from the ASCE Space Coast branch and, Cosentino noted, a very powerful tool for the team as it battles for the top spot: his wife Wendy Cosentino’s famous chocolate chip cookies.
The annual event is the culmination of work by ASCE student chapters that lasted the entire school year and included 21 regional competitions in the spring. It challenges students from 50 universities in the United States, Canada, China and India to demonstrate the technical and problem-solving skills they’ve learned through their classes and by participating in ASCE’s student chapters – skills which will prepare them for careers designing, building and maintaining critical infrastructure systems.
Florida Tech is one of just six schools in the championship from Region 5. The others are Georgia Tech, University of Florida, Auburn University, University of Alabama Huntsville and Louisiana Tech.
According to ASCE, the UESI Surveying Competition’s educational and professional goals include a recognition of the importance of basic surveying principles to all civil engineering projects. Students will be required to use standard field and office equipment and procedures to solve common problems encountered in industry.
