April 2015 |
| REGION UPDATE—MARCH 2015 BOARD MEETING HIGHLIGHTS Strategic Planning Reboot; Board Starts Scan of Key Issues  Constantine Memos, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is your Region 10 Director.The ASCE Board of Direction meeting was 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:
Read more on the Board’s meeting in ASCE News. |
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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 10 update? See the March edition of News Around Region 10 Share this page via social media and email:  |
| REGION 10 NEWS With visits from top ASCE leaders, Society reaches out to civil engineers in India and U.A.E.  Photo: ASCE A recent mission to India and the United Arab Emirates by ASCE's 2015 President Bob Stevens, center, and Executive Director Tom Smith, second from left, has helped the Society strengthen its bonds with civil engineers in both nations, where ASCE is held in high regard. Above, following the signing of an Agreement of Cooperation with the Society of Engineers – UAE, Stevens shakes hands with its leadership. The Society has 37,000 members, of which 65 percent are civil engineers. Read and see highlights of the trip in photos as shared by Stevens in his forum, President's Perspective. |
| REGION 10 NEWS University in Egypt stages ‘Fun’ engineering day to help qualify for ASCE status  Courtesy Ahmed Tantawy, Zagazig University Civil engineering students at Zagazig University in Ash Sharqiyah, Egypt, engaged in a campus-wide “Fun Engineering Day” as part of their ongoing effort to satisfy requirements for official ASCE International Student Group status. Papers were distributed and many engineering models presented, including a trussed spaghetti bridge, a cable-stayed bridge, a gravity center experiment with wooden plates, a mine sweeper robot and more. |
| INDIA SECTION Inventor of C-bar receives ASCE’s 2015 Michel Award for research The winner of ASCE’s 2015 Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research, Anil K. Kar, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, of Kolkata, India, was presented with the honor at the Society’s OPAL Gala in Arlington, Virginia, on March 26. Among Kar’s innovations is the C-bar, a rebar with a plain surface and a deformed axis with a capacity to significantly enhance the life span of concrete structures. “C-bar is a solution as simple as one could be, a zero-cost solution to the worldwide problem of early distress in concrete structures,” he said in accepting the award. Learn more about the achievements that made Kar deserving in ASCE News. |
| 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. |
| IN ASCE’s CIVIL ENGINEERING ONLINE MAGAZINE Market for renewable energy grows across the globe According to a pair of new reports, the global wind industry is growing, as is the overall climate-change industry. Plug into the trends in ASCE’s online edition of Civil Engineering magazine. |
| REGION 10 NEWS Abstracts sought for 7th CECAR – Civil Engineering Conference in the Asian Region  The next of the triennial CECAR conferences, the seventh Civil Engineering Conference in the Asian Region, will be held in late summer 2016 in Waikiki, Hawaii. ASCE is the host society for next year’s gathering, under the theme Ho-'Omalamalama: Building a Sustainable Infrastructure in the Asia Pacific Region. The abstract submission period has just opened. Learn more about CECAR7 and submit your abstract. |