April 2015 |
| REGION UPDATE—MARCH 2015 BOARD MEETING HIGHLIGHTS Strategic Planning Reboot; Board Starts Scan of Key Issues  Christopher
J. Menna, SR., P.E., M.ASCE, your Region 2 Director, is a member of the
Philadelphia Section and currently works for the City of Philadelphia’s
Department of Streets, Bureau of Surveys and Design, Bridge Section.Chris represented you at the ASCE Board of Direction meeting held March 27-28 at the Renaissance Capital View Hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. As in recent years, the meeting was held in conjunction with the ASCE Legislative Fly-in and the OPAL Awards Gala, allowing board members to support those events. With the March meeting, the board relaunched its ongoing strategic planning process, first instituted in 2006. Over time, that process led to ASCE’s current strategic initiatives of Infrastructure, Raise the Bar, and Sustainability. An advisory council made up of four Board members, chaired by Region 8 Director Kristina Swallow, has been working with staff to create a preliminary list of “strategic issues”—states of affairs, developments, or trends that could have a major impact on civil engineering, ASCE members, and ASCE as an organization. Board members received this list of strategic issues and topics in advance of the March Board meeting and were asked to think about what might be missing. During the meeting, members divided into breakout groups to share their thoughts on gaps, as well as provide input on relevancy, clarity, and issue consolidation. The same question--what’s missing?--was asked of the chairs of the ASCE Society and Strategic Initiative Committees and, following the Board meeting, of an expanded group that includes Region Governors and Section Presidents, Institute leaders, and the ASCE Industry Leaders Council. During a full-day strategic planning session at its July meeting, the Board will consider this input and work to better understand the issues and begin the process of refining the list. Then, at an October Board session an updated ASCE “radar screen” of strategic issues will be created. Such a radar screen represents the 10 to 20 issues the Board feels are most important for ASCE to either act on or monitor. In subsequent planning, the Board must then decide which of the very highest priority issues should be addressed as strategic initiatives. Once the top few issues are identified as strategic initiatives, the Board will establish desired outcomes and will charge the relevant committees to present action plans to achieve those goals. Finally, such initiatives will need to be launched through the budget process. Over time, the Board will monitor progress on the initiatives and will later return to scanning the environment for major trends that could require more focused attention down the road.. Among the other items on the Board’s agenda were:
Board members are interested in your views on the issues they are considering. To share your views, or other ideas on how ASCE can better serve its members and the profession, please email Chris. |
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Great outreach event or other activity? Let the whole Region know! If you’re a local ASCE leader and your Section, Branch, Younger Member Group, or Student Chapter has staged any special events, engaged in outreach from grade-school kids to lawmakers, done charity work, fund raising or anything of the sort, let ASCEnews Weekly know and we may include it in next month’s Region report. You may already have written about it and posted pictures in your newsletter, website, or social media. Share the details and any photos at asce.org/localnews. Got questions? Write to submissions@asce.org. See the other Region reports for April If you live adjacent to a Section in a different Region, or are merely interested in the other Region reports for April, click on each to view them: Region 1 Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section, Buffalo Section, Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers Section, Ithaca Section, Maine Section, Metropolitan Section, Mohawk-Hudson Section, New Hampshire Section, New Jersey Section, Puerto Rico Section, Rhode Island Section, Rochester Section, Syracuse Section, Vermont Section Region 2 Central Pennsylvania Section, Delaware Section, Lehigh Valley Section, Maryland Section, National Capital Section, Philadelphia Section, Pittsburgh Section Region 3 Akron-Canton Section, Central Illinois Section, Central Ohio Section, Cincinnati Section, Cleveland Section, Dayton Section, Duluth Section, Illinois Section, Michigan Section, Minnesota Section, North Dakota Section, Quad Cities Section, Toledo Section, Wisconsin Section Region 4 Arkansas Section, Indiana Section, Kentucky Section, North Carolina Section, South Carolina Section, Tennessee Section, Virginia Section, West Virginia Section Region 5 Alabama Section, Florida Section, Georgia Section, Louisiana Section, Mississippi Section Region 6 New Mexico Section, Oklahoma Section, Texas Section Region 7 Colorado Section, Iowa Section, Kansas City Section, Kansas Section, Nebraska Section, South Dakota Section, St. Louis Section, Wyoming Section Region 8 Alaska Section, Arizona Section, Columbia Section, Hawaii Section, Inland Empire Section, Montana Section, Nevada Section, Oregon Section, Seattle Section, Southern Idaho Section, Tacoma-Olympia Section, Utah Section Region 9 Los Angeles Section, Sacramento Section, San Diego Section, San Francisco Section Region 10 All International Sections, Branches, and Groups Missed last month's Region 2 update? See the March edition of News Around Region 2 Share this page via social media and email:  |
| REGION 2 NEWS 15th Fly-In enables ASCE members to brief lawmakers on key issues  David Hathcox for ASCE: As part of Legislative Fly-In activities, ASCE named U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), center, an Honorary Fellow for his service in Congress in support of infrastructure issues. To his right, ASCE 2015 President Bob Stevens presented Shuster with the certificate. ASCE members from states in Region 2 traveled to Washington, DC, in late March to take part in the Society’s 15th annual Legislative Fly-In. Members engaged with their elected senators and/or representatives or their staffs about infrastructure investment and other policy issues affecting civil engineers, notably the need for a financing solution to the nearly depleted Highway Trust Fund. Read Fly-In details as reported by ASCE Government Relations, organizer of the Fly-In. Thanks to the following members from Region 2 for taking part: John Bennett, Ocean View, DE Jason Bowes, Mechanicsburg, PA John Caperilla, Perkiomenville, PA Veronica Davis, Washington, DC Nathaniel Hayes, Pittsburgh Thomas Lanyon, Annapolis, MD Matthew Mccarty, Monrovia, MD Adrienne Nikolic, Philadelphia Gregory Scott, Pittsburgh Robert Traver, Schwenksville, PA |
| MARYLAND SECTION Founder of Clark Enterprises, A. James Clark dies at 87 Honorary Member A. James Clark, Hon.M.ASCE, NAE, owner of one of the nation’s largest general contracting firms, Clark Enterprises, died March 20 at his home in Easton, MD. He was 87. Born in Richmond, Va., Mr. Clark was hired by George Hyman Construction and became president in 1969. In 1996, the Clark Construction Group was formed from a merger of Hyman with a subsidiary construction firm he owned, Omni Construction. His companies built more than 1,200 projects in the Washington, DC, metro area alone during his tenure, among them the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Nationals Park, and the Verizon Center. Across the country, his firms built Milwaukee’s Miller Park and San Diego’s Petco Park. Read more about his life and achievements. |
| NATIONAL CAPITAL SECTION ASCE 1988 President Albert Grant, active promoter of sustainability, dies Albert A. Grant, P.E., Pres.88.ASCE, president of ASCE in 1988 and former chair of the Engineers’ Forum on Sustainability of the American Association of Engineering Societies, died on April 2 at his home in Potomac, MD. He was 88. Mr. Grant served as chief bridge designer for the Washington, D.C., Department of Highways and Traffic, and then as director of transportation planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. He had a lifelong association with the Catholic University of America, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1948, and served on the university’s Civil Engineering Advisory Council until his death. Discover more about the life and career of Mr. Grant. |
| CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA SECTION Penn State student member honored as a 2015 DiscoverE New Face of Engineering For making her mark on the industry and on society, Jennifer Kearney, S.M.ASCE, a Penn State senior civil engineering major from York, has been named to the 2015 New Faces of Engineering College Edition, as selected by the DiscoverE Foundation. Kearney handles logistics and funding for Penn State’s Steel Bridge team, served as overall orientation lead for more than 180 first-year students in the Women In Engineering Program, and was chairperson for SWE Stayover, involving more than 70 high school girls. She’s also active in Bridges to Prosperity, Engineers Without Borders USA, and other engineering outreach groups. Get to know Kearney. |
| NEW JERSEY SECTION Chair of NJIT’s civil engineering department elected ASCE Fellow Taha F. Marhaba, Ph.D., P.E., F. ASCE, professor and chairman of the civil and environmental engineering department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, has been elevated to Fellow status by ASCE’s Board of Direction. During Marhaba’s tenure as chairman, the department has seen unprecedented advances in academics, scholarly research, outreach, and public service programs. He has conducted fundamental and applied research in engineering areas related to water quality, drinking water treatment, and environmental systems management. Learn more about what made Marhaba deserving in ASCE News. |
| PHILADELPHIA SECTION Penn researchers say sediment goes with the flow earlier Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania seeking to understand the unpredictability of sediment transport in rivers under certain conditions have discovered in laboratory testing that particles that appear to be at rest are actually moving forward, well before the point at which conventional models would predict movement. Consider the discovery’s potential in ASCE’s online edition of Civil Engineering magazine. |
| IN ASCE’s CIVIL ENGINEERING ONLINE MAGAZINE Cities pursue successful sustainability efforts Cities across the world are pursuing a broad range of strategies to increase the energy efficiency of their buildings. Explore the solutions a study found in ASCE’s online edition of Civil Engineering magazine. |
| REGION 2 NEWS Congratulations to the University of Maryland, winners of the Mid-Atlantic Conference The University of Maryland Student Chapter topped 13 friendly rival chapters to win the overall ASCE Mid-Atlantic Conference competitions for 2015. This year’s event was hosted by the Penn State Student Chapter at its main campus in State College, PA. The ASCE-AISC 2015 National Student Steel Bridge Competition will be held May 22-23 at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. ASCE’s 2015 National Concrete Canoe Competition will take place June 20-22 at Clemson University, Clemson, SC. |