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ASCE impacts students, community

Courtesy of Commodore Builders
Shane Foley

Connector Editor

The UMass Lowell Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has put their stamp on many projects on campus and in the city. They are currently mentoring students in fifth through eighth grade at the Bartlett School in Lowell. They also work with the town of Lexington, Mass. to help monitor their storm water. They are planning a walkway along the Merrimack River by North Campus. This is just a portion of a large list of projects and partnerships that ASCE members are working on, but perhaps their biggest project is helping civil engineers walk out of UMass Lowell with a job to go with their degree.

“If you’re involved in ASCE as much as we have been, by the time you’re a senior, you most likely have a job already lined up waiting for you by the time you graduate,” said Treasurer Fabio Braz of the Steel Bridge team. They are a group of students who compete in a steel bridge making contest against other teams from around the country.

Giving students opportunities, like the one Braz enjoys with the Steel Bridge team, is what ASCE specializes in. While they hold general meetings biweekly, they are constantly notifying civil engineer majors of projects and activities that they can participate in.

“So, in ASCE, you go to class, and you learn all of these technical things from professors, but what we want to do is give people [an] actual hands-on experience,” said Ellen Gerardi, the current president of the organization.

Now a senior, Gerardi has been with ASCE since she was a freshman. In that time, she participated in the Lexington Storm Water project at the end of her sophomore year with Michaela Fitzgerald, who is currently vice president and will be president next year. Gerardi also planned a student night in her junior year which gave members the opportunity to meet engineers in the Boston area and even the national ASCE president came to speak.

“What our faculty advisor always says is ‘when you graduate, everyone’s diploma will look exactly the same, so, how are you going to separate yourself from someone else?’” said Gerardi.  “And it’s not just UMass Lowell, it’s every school in the region. We all have the same exact thing. So, what are you going to do to stand out?”

The Lexington Storm Water Project that Gerardi worked with Fitzgerald on has been one students have repeatedly been a part of. Karen Chan, who formerly held the titles of media liaison and professional development coacher, is currently the co-manager of the project.

“So, what we do in Lexington is called the Lexington Storm Water Project, and every week, a group of students go to the town of Lexington and help the DPW sample their storm water,” said Chan. “They have to meet specific requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and we test things like ammonia, chlorine, e-coli levels, stuff like that, and it’s a really great opportunity for students to get involved.”

Not only has this collaboration been a great help to the town of Lexington, but it has also made students think more about studying the environmental branch of civil engineering. “I haven’t had any real environmental classes yet but doing the storm water project. I already know that that’s what I want to do,” said Fitzgerald. “You don’t even take environmental until the end of your junior year.”

Aside from providing civil engineering students with experience, ASCE is also dedicated to making their members more marketable for the job search.

“We do résumé workshops, we do LinkedIn workshops, we design software that we use for the school,” said Braz. “In the professional world, whatever we don’t learn in school, we kind of fill that void and teach it to the younger students as well. We hosted mock interviews. The vice president of a large company came down and interviewed the kids, gave them practice and stuff like that.”

Inventing in the professional development of these students in this manner has yielded some remarkable results. Tyler Valila, currently serving as treasurer for ASCE, met the former president of the entire organization, Bob Stevens. Valila is applying to the University of Texas for grad school, and their grad coordinator actually knew Stevens, which helped Valila’s application process.

“At these events that you go to, you end up meeting people you never know will help you down the road,” said Valila.

In the effort to help their members gain experience in the field of engineering, ASCE also contributed to getting a different capstone project for civil engineers. “Typically, what the capstone has been is you get to design a bridge that’s already been built, and then it’s like ‘congratulations, you can graduate,’ but a couple years ago some students said ‘we want all of this work to mean something more than that,’” said Gerardi.

In response to this outcry, a group of students have been able to work on a project in Haiti for the past three years. This year, they were planning a trip to the city of Les Cayes to address their sanitation issues. In order to raise the money, ASCE placed a tip jar on the counter of the Starbucks cash register on North Campus. A month later, they counted 355 dollars out of that tip jar.

While fulfilling all of these other functions, ASCE still takes the time to mentor their underclassmen as well. They often know most of each other in the club, and are willing to help with everything from classwork, to class selection, to deciding which internship to take. While many members hold leadership positions, they still take time to help each other out.

“There is definitely a lot of mentorship involved,” said Gerardi. “That’s why we’re getting out sophomores and our freshman to come and we tell them to please come. We want to help you.”

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