The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Southeast Symposium is the student’s organization biggest competition of the year, and the UCF student chapter placed fourth overall at the 2025 event, beating out 16 other schools from across the nation.
The conference offers students from Georgia, Florida and Puerto Rico the chance to network and compete in a variety of civil engineering competitions.
These include the ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition, the Student Steel Bridge Competition, the Timber-Strong Design Build Competition, and the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition. Teams who place in these or other sponsored contests can move on to the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships.
“This is where all the students get their hands-on experience and their technical experience, Rendell says. “It’s really fun and a great way for civil engineering students to get that technical experience without having to get an internship. This can be that bridge to an internship.”
The UCF chapter of ASCE did take home multiple awards from these individual competitions:
- Mystery Competition: Third Place
- Solutioneering: Second Place
- Southeast Design-Build: Second Place
- Audrey’s Traffic Control: Third Place
- Sustainable Solutions: Third Place
- AISC/ASCE Steel Bridge: Third Place, Aesthetics
- Concrete Canoe, Men’s Sprint: Third Place
- Concrete Canoe, CoEd Sprint: Third Place
- Concrete Canoe, Display: Second Place
- Concrete Canoe, Overall: Third Place
There is no maximum number of students that you can bring to this conference; UCF brought a total of 53 as they try to encourage all eligible students to go. Interested students must meet the criteria, which includes being active in ASCE, earning community service hours and having some hands-on experience.
Accompanying the students to the host school, which was the University of Georgia, were the three faculty advisors: Assistant Professor Jiannan Chen, Lecturer Farzaneh Nosouhian and Instructor Jacqueline Sullivan. Two practitioner advisors also attended.
“As the faculty advisor for the concrete canoe team, it was incredible to witness the dedication, perseverance and teamwork that went into this competition,” Nosouhian says. “The students worked tirelessly for the past two semesters, refining their design, improving their construction techniques and making strategic changes to enhance their canoe’s performance.”
UCF’s ASCE student chapter has never been to the national championships for the concrete canoe challenge, so they are looking to change that in the future.
“We are very much on the right track. I think we just need to keep pushing for more resources from UCF and just keep that momentum going,” Rendell says. “The goal at the end of the day isn’t really the placements; It’s the learning and the fun these students are getting.”
- Written by Sydney Ford