Cal Poly Pomona’s American Society of Civil Engineers chapter placed second overall at the Pacific South West Conference (PSWC) and second in concrete canoe, qualifying for the national competition. The conference was held March 23-26 at Cal State Los Angeles.
Engineering students competed in 21 events, including concrete canoe (second place), flag design (first place), triathlon (first place) and geotechnical engineering (third place). The National Concrete Canoe Competition (NCCC) will be held in June at the University of Evansville in Indiana.
Normally, teams must place first in concrete canoe at the regionals in order to qualify for nationals. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the overall winner at PSWC and first in concrete canoe, won the national competition last year and had a spot reserved for this year. This allowed the second-place team from PSWC to attend nationals. The other 18 schools in the regional competition included: USC, UCLA, Arizona State, the University of Hawaii and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Shalia Khovananth, a fifth- year civil engineering student and aesthetics captain, is one of eight captains who are already preparing for the NCCC.
“We will definitely be working out harder because races equal 25 percent of our score,” Khovananth says. “We will also improve our presentation and the technical paper on the concrete canoe, which are 25 percent each.” Khovananth adds that the remaining 25 percent of the score comes from the final product of the concrete canoe, which they cannot change.
Cal Poly Pomona’s ASCE chapter has 250 members and 87 members competed in this year’s conference.