PSWC Results are In!

Congratulations to our PSWC competition teams on their accomplishments at this year’s virtual conference. The Pacific Southwest ASCE Student Conference is an event where teams from schools in the south-western region of the U.S. compete and pitch their presentations on various topics. After much hard work, all five of our teams placed, with Cal Poly placing third overall.

The Sustainability team, led by civil engineering sophomore Naoki Weldon, received second place. As a first-timer at the conference, Weldon shared that his experience was great. The team developed a plan to make the UCLA event center more sustainable by looking into different areas of impact, such as solid waste and carbon emissions. In the end, they came up with nine solutions to decrease environmental impact in a wide variety of ways.

Led by environmental engineering junior Lanie Carl, the Environmental Design team had a great time at the conference and didn’t let the online setting stop them from enjoying the experience. Their project, the SLO Flow, developed a conceptual stormwater management design consisting of multi beneficial structural and non-structural practices for the Lincoln Heights community. These solutions resulted in better stormwater system management. The team saw their hard work pay off and ended up receiving second place in the Environmental Design competition.

The Transportation team, led by civil engineering senior Kezia Suwandhaputra placed second in their competition. They were tasked with creating a proposal and presentation to improve the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) lot. This proposal included trip generation and distribution, design, cost and environmental impact analysis. Although the restrictions of COVID-19 altered the conference, Suwandhaputra said she loved working with the PSWC Transportation team. “I learned how to lead a team, manage my time and my teammates’ time, and wing it.”

The Technical Paper team finished third in their competition. The team’s task was to answer a prompt about how the civil engineering profession should respond to a situation and what their ethical responsibilities were as civil engineers. At the conference, they had to do a five minute presentation followed by five minutes of questions from judges. Team captain Hannah Berenjfoorosh, a Civil Engineering senior, explained that it was nice to see the Cal Poly teams support each other at the events and banquet. Berenjfoorosh advises students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department is to get involved with PSWC as she wishes she participated in earlier years.

The Surveying team, led by civil engineering junior Macey Ferron-Jones received third place in their competition where they constructed a topographic map of a small township in Eastern Ohio. As captain, Ferron-Jones met with the team and assigned tasks to complete with deadlines. She said she is so proud of the Surveying team and thankful for their hard work.

All of the teams worked so incredibly hard to compete at the conference and we are so proud of their achievements.