Note to editors and news directors: To arrange for photos and interviews with the CSULA ASCE team, call the Public Affairs Office at Cal State L.A., (323) 343-3050.
Cal State L.A.’s civil engineering group named L.A.’s ‘Best Student Chapter’
Its concrete bowling ball rolls to first place in competition
Los Angeles, CA – Recognized for its community service, outreach and technical achievements, Cal State L.A.’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter was awarded the “Best Student Chapter of the Year” for the Los Angeles section at the 2008 Pacific Southwest Regional ASCE Conference.
At the conference competitions, the CSULA ASCE student chapter also placed first in concrete bowling ball, first in the stiffness category for its “Pirata II” steel bridge (with a loading capacity of 2400 lbs.), third in technical presentation, fourth for surveying, fifth overall for its “Tlacochtli” concrete canoe, and sixth in co-ed race.
The team of 33 ASCE student members at Cal State L.A. competed against other chapters from Southern California, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, and Japan. More than 1,000 engineering students attended the conference at CSU Northridge.
According to Rene Carrillo, president of the CSULA chapter, “Even though the conference takes place in the spring, the ASCE students were planning, designing, constructing, and fundraising since last fall because these projects require hundreds of hours to build a final product.”
“Now the purpose,” he said, “is not only to design and build these projects, but to test them for their efficiency. The concrete canoe is actually placed in water and raced against other canoes where the students are the paddlers. As for the steel bridge, it needed to be assembled by the team in less than 45 minutes.”
Other conference competitions include students building a Frisbee and a bowling ball made out of concrete, developing a filtration system that can clean water for drinking purposes, and solving various engineering problems.
The CSULA chapter was recently ranked among the top one-third of student chapters in the nation by ASCE National.
For more information, contact the CSULA ASCE faculty advisor, Irving Kett, at (323) 343-4457.
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