American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE): Making Connections

By Mike Olka, PEMike Olka is a Senior Engineer for Lake County Public Works.

Building connections between communities can take many forms, from physical connections like roads, bridges and railways to those less tangible ones, such as open lines of communication, engagement and support. While engineering has a well-known history of creating physical connections between communities, let’s dive into the less tangible connections that we construct.

The intangible connections we will focus on are three distinct groups: school-aged children, young adults and underrepresented engineering professionals.

Introducing Kids To Stem

Volunteers from various engineering organizations are constantly building connections with local youth. These connections can take many forms, including participating in engaging presentations and activities in classrooms, supporting youth competitions, and providing mentoring. Engineering societies in Florida provide presentations and activities to hundreds of elementary, middle and high school students every year.

Through the excitement and enthusiasm of the volunteers, students learn about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The volunteers support the teachers by providing a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of STEM as well as personal experiences.

Youth competitions such as MATHCOUNTS, the ASCE Bridge Florida contest, the Science Olympiad, Future Cities, SECME, Odyssey of the Mind and science fairs provide challenging opportunities for students to apply and expand their STEM skills. By volunteering at these competitions, Florida’s engineers engage with the students in their communities.

This engagement allows for the students to receive deeper explanations of STEM concepts as well as create personal connections. As professionals in STEM fields volunteer to judge or coach at these competitions, they become mentors for these students.

Mentoring The Next Generation Of Engineers

Professional engineering organizations like the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) work to build connections with young adults while they are in college through student chapters.

Student chapters at local universities give young adults the opportunity to learn and practice many of the nontechnical skills that employers desire – leadership, marketing, communication and interpersonal conflicts, to name a few. To ensure successful student chapters, many of them receive direct funding from their parent organizations, scholarship opportunities for the members, technical presentations and student focused events/ conferences.

By supporting student chapters, these organizations encourage young adults to continue being members and support their continued growth as leaders. Events and competitions allow the students to engage with other student chapters while also providing the opportunity to expand social connections.

These events could be as large as the ASCE Southeast Student Symposium, which involves approximately 800 students from 19 universities in the Southeast U.S. Closer to home, the ASCE Florida Section Student Development Conference involves around 100 students from the 11 ASCE student chapters in the state.

Through the efforts of professional engineering organizations, young adults benefit from activities, opportunities and events that are crafted specifically for them to connect with each other and professional engineers.

Giving Everyone A Voice

In a profession that has largely been associated with certain stereotypes, it is critical to foster a fully inclusive culture that celebrates individual uniqueness, projects a sense of belonging, and promotes equitable opportunity for all people to participate as members and stakeholders of the engineering community, regardless of identity.

Through the inclusion of all members of society into engineering, our connections to the youth and young adults become stronger as they see professional engineers who look like them. This representation also benefits the profession by including different perspectives, ways of thinking and experiences.

Engineering organizations within Florida embrace the need for inclusion in many ways, such as hosting joint events with each other during Engineer’s Week, presenting events like “Girls in Engineering Day” that encourage girls and women to engage in engineering, and formalizing commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion into their operating documents. Many local ASCE branches also hold joint society mixers with members from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) or Association of Cuban American Engineers (ACAE) to promote networking opportunities with other members of the engineering profession.

These intangible connections that we build with the communities around us serve many functions. Some of them help us ensure the future of our profession by encouraging the next generations. Other connections function to supply new ideas or perspectives on the problems facing us.

Regardless of the initial intent behind the creation of these connections, we all benefit from reaching out, engaging and encouraging all of those around us.