“Help you matter more and enable you to make a bigger difference”
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Region 8 Director's Column
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In This Issue
Region 8 Director's Column
ASCE 2019 Convention
Utah Section Update
Region 8 Calendar of Upcoming Events
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Aloha and Mahalo for your membership in ASCE. Your membership dues support the civil engineering profession and the development of leaders to help us all matter more.
As we approach Thanksgiving, many thanks to the many volunteer leaders that make our Society move forward each day. Sacrificing your time and energy outside of your day job and personal life means so much to our membership and our profession.
Thank you to the ASCE staff that help make our volunteers’ vision a reality. Thank you for the daily support of our goals and your patience of working with volunteers to accomplish your tasks for us.
Thank you to our membership for being a part of our great organization. Without your participation and financial support, our organization would not exist and our profession would not grow.
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Last month, I attended the Society’s Annual Convention in Miami, FL. It was exciting to watch our own Region 8 leader Dr. Kancheepuram “Guna” Gunalan be installed as our Society’s 2020 President. Guna shared his passion and many goals for ASCE. The top three that stood out to me were:
- ASCE continues to be an organization of the future - transparent, diverse, inclusive and accessible;
- Financially sustainable that stays relevant for the foreseeable future; and
- Attracts the best and brightest to the profession.
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ASCE’s 2020 President KN “Guna” Gunalan was joined by his family during his induction ceremony. PHOTO: Jason Dixson Photography
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His son, Kabilar, and his daughter, Pallavi, gave a tremendous and inspiring introduction of Guna during his installation. It showcased the great job that Guna and his wife, Duru, have done in raising their children and inspiring them to pursue their higher education and follow their father’s example as a great leader. Congratulations Guna.
I participated in the Fall Board of Direction meeting that followed the Convention in Miami. Highlights from the Board meeting include:
- The Annual Convention Advisory Council reported on the progress that the Annual Convention is making towards providing a program more receptive to the membership’s desires while making it a profit generating event.
- The Future World Vision Team provided an update on the Floating Cities development and the development of other future city concepts. The team had an interactive booth at the Annual Convention that I participated at that demonstrated the great potential of this future city concept. For more, visit https://www.futureworldvision.org/.
- The Governing Documents Committee provided a first reading of proposed revisions to the Constitution towards improving the Society and helping it become more nimble in its operations. Some of the changes passed addressed the Board actions to have Younger Members be more engaged with the Board.
- The Board passed the criteria for the 2021 At-Large Director position. Preference will be given to candidates with a current or past leadership role in government or in younger member group activities. Candidates that expand diversity on the Board will be given special consideration in accordance with ASCE Policy Statement 417, Promoting Diversity and Inclusion.
A reminder that the next set of Region 8 meetings will take place in San Francisco, CA prior to the 2020 Region 8 and 9 Multi-Region Leadership Conference (MRLC). The Region 8 Board of Governors will meet on Wednesday, January 22. The Region 8 Assembly will meet on Thursday, January 23. Region 8 will be sending out registration information for the Assembly meeting shortly. Please note that the Region 8 Assembly meeting is not a part of the MRLC.
The 2020 Region 8 and 9 MRLC is on January 24 and 25 in San Francisco, CA. The MRLC consists of the Workshop for Section, Branch and Institute Leaders (WSBIL), the Western Regional Younger Member Council (WRYMC) and the Workshop for Student Chapter Leaders (WSCL). Please visit the following links to register:
register for the WSBIL,
register for the WRYMC, and t
he
register for the WSCL
.
Please note that WRYMC is organizing a number of pre-conference events on Thursday, January 23, that non-younger members are invited to participate in, but conflict with the Assembly meeting.
Mahalo for being a member of ASCE and for all that you do to help our great profession. Let’s increase out numbers so others can also realize that #Region8isgreat!!!
Mahalo and Aloha,
Tony C.G. Lau, P.E., ENV SP, F.ASCE
Society Director, Region 8
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The ASCE 2019 Convention was held in Miami, FL from October 10 to 13 at the Hyatt Regency Miami. The theme this year was Engineering, Innovating, Leading.
The Convention officially kicked off with the Opening Plenary session on October 11. President Robin Kemper gave opening remarks. Alex McDowell, then followed with a deep dive into design process and end user experience of a virtual city of the future, witnessing its evolution as it develops over a 50-year horizon. The Floating City digital proof of concept—the first installment in ASCE’s Future World Vision— highlights deeply considered systems, communities, ecologies, and economies, exploring the city from both a systems and human perspective. Floating City represents a bold step in the technology of narrative and media experience, finding answers by provoking a whole new set of questions and illuminating the future of civil engineering
President Kemper called the ASCE Annual Business Meeting to order on the morning of October 12. She along with Executive Director Tom Smith announced successes and achievements of members during the Society award ceremony. The Region 8 members and groups listed below were among those recognized this year:
- Don Nguyen, P.E., M.ASCE of the Seattle Section and Noe Santos, P.E., M.ASCE of the Nevada Section, Southern Nevada Branch received the Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement
- Carla Palma, P.E., AM.ASCE of the Nevada Section, Southern Nevada Branch received the Young Government Civil Engineer Award
- The Hawaii Section Younger Member Forum received the Younger Member Group Award for Small Groups
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Don Nguyen and Noe Santos recipients of the Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement.
PHOTO: Jason Dixson Photography
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Carla Palma recipient of the Young Government Civil Engineer Award.
PHOTO: Jason Dixson Photography
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President Kemper also presided over the recognition of the outgoing Society officers and the installation of the 2020 Society officers. The outgoing officers included outgoing Past President Kristina Swallow. The inducted officers included President (and Region 8’s own) Kancheepuram “Guna” Gunalan.
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ASCE 2019 Past President Kristina Swallow. PHOTO: Jason Dixson Photography
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The Convention closed with a keynote address by Army Major Lisa Jaster on Leadership and Performance. Major Jaster is a soldier, an engineer, a wife and mother, and a trailblazer. She is only one of only three women to graduate from the first integrated United States Army Ranger program. She did so at age 37 while the average trainee age is 23. She already had bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering and a husband and children with a fulfilling engineering job with Shell Oil in Houston. White picket fence and flowers in the window…so why go through the punishment of the Army Ranger program? Because it was the first time that the Army Ranger program was open to women, she did it to lift up an entire gender. She shared her personal experiences of going through one of the most difficult combat training courses in the world and how she experienced many emotional valleys where she felt like quitting but kept pushing through and she made it. It makes many of our difficult life decisions seem so simple. It inspired the audience to just keep pushing forward for the right reasons.
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The Utah Section has had an exciting and busy fall this year. Utah’s economy has been among the more robust and fastest growing in the nation which is good news for all of us in the Civil Engineering profession. The Utah Section had two representatives, Section President John Diamond and President-Elect Darren Burton, who attended the Fall Region 8 Assembly in Reno, Nevada. This was a great opportunity to interact and network with other Section and Region 8 leaders.
The Utah Section is in the process of updating the Utah infrastructure report card which is scheduled for release in January 2021. The release of the report card is scheduled to coincide with the beginning of the 2021 Utah legislative session. Our Utah Section Past President Craig Friant is the leader of this effort and has done a great job getting the ball rolling and moving this huge effort forward. We are excited by the willingness of professionals from throughout the State as well as students from the BYU Student Chapter who have volunteered their time to assist with this effort.
Some of the other events that have taken place within the Utah Section this fall include an outreach presentation to upcoming engineers at Salt Lake Community College in October by the Geo-Institute and the semi-annual PE Review Class put on by the Utah Younger Members Forum (YMF). The Utah Section History and Heritage Committee is in the process of accepting nominations for landmark individual or landmark project for 2020, which will be awarded at the annual Section meeting in June 2020.
In October, the YMF hosted a BBQ in Salt Lake City for engineers and their families. This is an annual event that has always been a great activity to connect student chapter members and young professionals with the rest of the civil engineering community. The YMF, in conjunction with the University of Utah Student Chapter, also put on an FE Exam Tip Session at the University of Utah during the first week of November.
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Region 8 Calendar of Upcoming Events
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- Deadline to apply for the Legislative Fly-In – November 21, 2019
- Deadline to Declare for Region Governor Candidacy – December 1, 2019
- Region 8 Winter Board of Governors Meeting date of Wednesday, January 22, 2020
- Region 8 Assembly Winter Meeting date of Thursday, January 23, 2020
- 2020 Region 8 and 9 Multi-Region Leadership Conference (MRLC), San Francisco, CA, January 24 and 25, 2020
- Legislative Fly-In, March 11 and 12, 2020
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