Virginia Tech Students Prepare for ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition

On March 28-30, 2024, Virginia Tech will host the Virginias Conference American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Student Symposium. Alongside the traditional student competitions for concrete canoe, steel bridge, and surveying, this conference will also include the Sustainable Solutions Competition and other competitions for the various subdisciplines in Civil Engineering. ASCE first debuted the Sustainable Solutions Competition in 2021, and this is the first year Virginia Tech is participating.

Over the past eight weeks, four Virginia Tech Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) undergraduate students alongside two graduate student mentors have been diligently working to implement a list of provided site parameters for the redevelopment of a former industrial site adjacent to the Big Brown River in the City of ASCE. In addition to meeting the stated programming requirements, the team was also required to incorporate the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure 's ENVISION framework into their design decisions. Their initial submittal the week of March 11 included a technical proposal, site plan, and calculations package. During the Virginias Conference at the end of the month, they will share a poster, deliver a presentation, and answer questions from a panel of judges.

Claire White, P.E., ENV SP , faculty advisor of the team, offered:

"This team continues to blow me away each and every time we meet. When we originally set up the weekly meeting schedule, I thought there was a chance we would be canceling meetings. I could not have been more wrong! The students have scheduled multiple additional meetings amongst themselves and have put in a lot of long hours towards this project on top of maintaining their full course workload. I am so proud of their work ethic, creativity, leadership, and collaboration, and it is so rewarding to watch this team pull concepts from various LDDI at Virginia Tech courses to solve complex engineering problems. They are representing both themselves and VT CEE very well."

Student team members include:

• Nichole Dorn, EIT, ENV SP (team captain) - senior from Audubon, PA who will join Kimley-Horn 's Philadelphia office after graduation. Nichole's favorite part of land development is the sense of fulfillment in finding ways to design our environment to be more sustainable and resilient.
• Brooke Dashiell, EIT - senior from Norfolk, VA who will join Kimley-Horn's Austin office after graduation. Brooke enjoys how each land development project presents unique challenges requiring innovative problem-solving and collaboration.
• Alex Price - senior from Fredericksburg, VA who will join Bowman Consulting 's Fredericksburg office after graduation. Alex's favorite part of land development is the satisfaction of seeing a project go from an undeveloped lot to a finished project based on your work.
• Ethan Valera - senior from Stafford, VA who will join Bowman Consulting's Fredericksburg office after graduation. Ethan appreciates the uniqueness of every site and project and the creativity that such uniqueness requires in design and development.
• Lucas Alexander - graduate student from Virginia Beach, VA who will intern with Cunningham Engineering Corporation in Sacramento, CA this upcoming summer. Lucas cites the creativity of design in land development as his favorite aspect and appreciates the lasting impacts it can have for years to come.
• Natalie Romero - graduate student from Washington, D.C. who will join GordonDC after graduation. Natalie enjoys the day-to-day opportunity to shape communities and improve quality of life through land development projects.

Good luck to the team later this month and GO HOKIES!