UIC takes home surveying win and more at ASCE competition
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UIC’s student chapter of ASCE won first place in the surveying competition and second place in the concrete canoe competition during the annual ASCE Western Great Lakes Student Symposium in Milwaukee.
The symposium comprises a series of team competitions encompassing different technical concentrations students explore in civil, materials, and environmental engineering. It also provides students with a fun atmosphere and the opportunity to network with like-minded individuals at other schools.
The UIC surveying team consisted of captain Zach Barwock, Hector Salgado Baltierra, Joe Glassman, Claire Mathews, and Luke Vucic.
For the surveying competition, the students were tasked with completing multiple tasks, which required them to use standard field and office equipment and procedures to solve common problems encountered in industry. It included completing a topographic mapping project with a presentation, a topo map display at the symposium, and field tasks.
“Our team was super excited! It was really rewarding to win first place,” Mathews said. “Our team showed perseverance. The surveying team over the past four years has been so close to winning but would end up second or third. That only made us want to try harder, and it finally paid off.”
“The key takeaway would be how important it is to have a supportive and hardworking team,” added Barwock. “They did an absolutely astounding job. Each person on the team had a specific ability that they executed perfectly on each of the different tasks we were given.”
CONCRETE CANOE
UIC students also captured second place in the concrete canoe competition. This event challenges students to design, construct, and race canoes built with concrete.
The team was made up of captains Caden Slovacek and Max Edman, and Aya Adbulbaki, Ash Antunez, Moses Devadass, Anjanette Francisco, Ashley Jurado, Nathan Kis, Paul Kitterman, Tomasz Kowalczyk, Megan Lubonja, Sarah Moreno, Adan Perez, Tarang Rana, Hector Salgado, and David Villegas.
UIC took first place in the technical presentation, second place in the technical proposal, and third place in the best final product, which earned them second place overall in the competition.
“I am incredibly proud of our performance and was excited to see all of our hard work being recognized. It was very rewarding to see the whole team smiling and cheering as we went up on stage to claim our awards,” Slovacek said.
In addition to competing against peer institutions, the team faced additional challenges as they had to start from scratch in nearly every aspect of the canoe.
“Our innovative construction technique required us to completely redesign the canoe hull, concrete mix, and mold. We figured out each aspect, but managing that alongside everything else within a one-year timeline was challenging,” Slovacek said.
Despite all the obstacles the team faced, Slovacek found the entire experience to be very rewarding, and emphasized the importance of getting involved with student organizations at UIC
“Involvement in clubs deepens engineering knowledge, provides invaluable hands-on experience, and—most importantly—builds a sense of community. I’ve met lifelong friends through Concrete Canoe, and it was amazing to see the rest of the team forming bonds with people they might never have otherwise talked to. The team truly had a blast, both inside and outside of the water,” he said.