Engineering conference a summer highlight

Members of the UW-Madison Steel Bridge Team assemble their bridge at the Kohl Center during the ASCE national conference. (37K JPG)

More than 1,200 students gathered this past summer on the UW-Madison campus to take part in the 150th National Student Conference of The American Society of Civil Engineers. The conference featured concrete canoe races, steel bridge building contests, and even a clean water test, where students used ordinary households items to clean up polluted water. Students also had the chance to take part in concrete bowling contests, build bridges out of balsa wood, and match skills in a surveying competition.

College of Engineering students saw the university's concrete canoe team finish fifth out of 25 teams taking part in the national competition, held near the Memorial Union Terrace on Lake Mendota. It was the canoe team's highest national finish in recent years. The steel-bridge building team placed 16th out of more than 40 teams, and had two first-place finishes in the categories of construction time and construction economy.

Civil and environmental engineering students also had the opportunity to tour major Wisconsin civic projects such as Miller Park in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Art Museum and its famous new addition by architect Santiago Calatrava and the Overture Project arts district in downtown Madison.

In addition to ASCE, major event sponsors were Master Builders Technologies Inc., an Ohio-based construction company, and the American Institute of Steel Construction.