CLAYTOR LAKE, Va. – After months, civil engineering students are finally able to test out what they’ve made.
“You see these UVA’s, Miller High School come and, honestly, you don’t really think about them building concrete canoes, having big engineering programs,” said Campbell Mahle, president of Virginia Tech’s American Society of Civil Engineers.
The American Society of Civil Engineers hosts a competition every year for civil engineering students, and this year, Virginia Tech got to host at Claytor Lake State Park.
“It hosts 12 schools, 11 universities, one high school,” Mahle said.
The competition is full of different events like cement canoe races and steel bridge building.
They said for months students plan, organize, and design everything leading up to this day.
Campbell said it’s great to be able to see what the other schools come up with.
“It’s cool to be around other like-minded people, especially with the design teams,” said Campbell. “We can compare designs and I am sure [they] pull strategies they use to build [theirs] the next year.”
While this is a unique and fun way to apply their civil engineering, they also said, this competition can help them land jobs post-graduation.
“It definitely throws me into a project management role and definitely gets you used to talking to sponsors and companies and adults in a different setting than your teachers,” Campbell said.
The Virginia Tech department head of civil and environmental engineering said this competition is more than just the product presented.
“They’re judged on their ability as engineers to bring it all together,” said Mark Widdowson. “It’s really a project management competition.”
He said competitions like this allow Virginia Tech to show the reach the school has in the engineering world.