ASCEing Your Professional Career
Note: All experiences in this article are written by Cristina, Melissa, and Gabriela. We share our personal experiences from the years we participated in the ASCE-UPRM Student Chapter. Every person has different experiences in their universities’ chapter, and we wanted to share ours with our blog readers.
Get it? It’s a pun.
Acing? Ace? ASCE? ASCE-ing? Anyways….
Building your professional career can be difficult. Not many people even think about developing skills for their professional careers during their early college years. Some like to wait until after they graduate. It’s never too late to start, but for those who want to start early, professional and student organizations are definitely one way to do it.
One example of this can be the student chapters of the ASCE. Today we share the stories of three girls in civil who used ASCE to jumpstart their professional careers. Who are they? Let’s meet them!
Meet Cristina, Melissa, and Gabriela!
Cristina Lorenzo Velázquez joined ASCE back in 2014. In 2016 she joined the directive board as the Documents Manager and became chapter President the next year.
Melissa A. Padilla Cintrón joined ASCE in 2015 as a volunteer for a regional competition. Continued in the Service Committee, and in 2017 she became the Co-Manager of the Service Committee.
Gabriela Yáñez González joined the Service Committee as a freshman in 2016. From 2017 to 2019, she was the chapter's Documents Manager and then, the next year, became the chapter’s President.
The three of them worked together as part of the 2017-2018 ASCE-UPRM directive board. That is how they met.
Now you know our guest writers; but there is still one question we haven’t addressed…
Today ASCE turns 170 years old. Since it was founded in 1852, ASCE has been the nation’s oldest engineering society. The American Society of Civil Engineers represents more than 150,000 members of the civil engineering profession in 177 countries.
Through professional membership, it offers many benefits to its members, such as access to career advancement resources, continuing education programs, technical resources, and a wide community of professionals from all around the world.
It also offers opportunities to students through student membership. ASCE student membership has many programs, scholarships, and resources that give them the knowledge and opportunities to enter the industry and get on the right career path.
Student members’ first interaction with ASCE is through student chapters. Student chapters participate in competitions, share resources, and offer their members many educational and networking activities. There are ASCE Student Chapters in all 50 states and many countries worldwide.
The student chapter at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez (ASCE-UPRM) was founded in 1949. Since then, it has provided its members and the community at the university with many development activities and opportunities.
Some of the opportunities the ASCE-UPRM offers are the following:
Community service activities through the Outreach and Service Committees.
Professional development workshops like resume building, elevator pitch, and career path opportunities.
Leadership development through experience with public speaking and team building activities.
Technical engineering knowledge through participation in the southeast regional competitions.
Career fair activities like the professional BootCamp and their annual Companies Night.
Now that we know what ASCE and the student chapters are, back to the point of this blog: our experiences.
How did ASCE help you develop as a leader?
Melissa:
“I consider myself shy, and being involved in activities made me confident and pushed me to speak up and be able to stand in front of the public. In addition, it also helped to manage my time between classes and any ASCE activities.”
Cristina:
“Being part of the ASCE helped me develop many skills that we don’t gain in the classroom, such as critical thinking, leadership, time management, teamwork, and public speaking. But more importantly, built my confidence and showed me that what I was doing and keep doing now as a graduate student impacts others positively. Especially the huge commitment and responsibility I felt as president of the chapter, despite the hard times after Hurricane Maria, to not let down a group of students eager to compete and bring home a championship of the 2018 ASCE Southeast Student Conference. Joining the ASCE student chapter also helped me discover some of my passions academically speaking; mentoring and teaching.”
Gabriela:
“Being part of ASCE-UPRM gave me back the confidence to speak in public. Whether it be presenting a workshop to my peers, information to professional companies, or STEM activities to kids. I learned to develop time management and organizational skills through student competitions. Ans also transfer them to my peers in order to achieve our goals. Lastly, ASCE taught me how to network and provided opportunities for me to connect with professionals in the field. ”
Lessons Learned
Teamwork and communication!
Good teamwork is key, especially nowadays and in engineering, as we are always working collaboratively towards a goal.
Even though sometimes everyone will not agree on certain things is important to take into account all the ideas to learn from each other and get to the best agreement.
Networking is key!
Networking is key to keep growing as a professional. Knowing how to communicate with professionals in the field can help create genuine connections and open many doors for the future.
Learn to delegate!
Good leaders don’t take all the tasks for themselves but rather delegate among their teammates and give the guidance needed to complete them.
Build your support system!
Having a support system or friends with the same interests can be really motivating and, at some point, stress-relieving to know you have someone to count on.
A support system is not only made from peers. Professors and other professionals who you meet through ASCE can be a part of them.
Civil is community!
The civil engineering and civil works professions are for the benefit of the community. Understanding that and doing whatever we can to help and better our community can make us better engineers.
Takeaways
We take away from these experiences all the unforgettable moments and experiences we had with the ASCE student chapter, as they have helped us grow personally and professionally. All of those experiences and opportunities we had, from being part of the board of directives to competing in the regional competitions with our projects to represent our chapter, university, and Puerto Rico, made us the professionals we are today. We also take all the personal connections and friendships for life made throughout those years. They were our support system then and continue to be so through our different career stages. Thanks to the student competitions, our passions, and paths (geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, and surveying) were defined.
We will always encourage students to get involved with student organizations early in their professional careers. We believe it is the best way to gain experience and friendship that will last a lifetime and be of huge support throughout their career.
After graduating from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, they each continue to grow professionally with the help of the tools developed with ASCE.
Cristina is a graduate student at NC State University. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering - Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering. While doing so, she has also been very active at the Geo-Institute Graduate Student Organization at NC State (ASCE’s specialty institute). She has held the positions of Treasurer (2020-2021), Vice-President (2021-2022), and is now Secretary (2022-Present).
Melissa works as Survey Analyst for DRMP, Inc. in Tampa, Florida. She is also a volunteer Brand Ambassador for Get Kids into Survey as part of the organization’s global effort to inspire young people to join the ranks of surveying professionals.
Gabriela is a graduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering - Structural Engineering. She works with Girls in Civil as the Outreach Coordinator in her free time.
Quick Facts!
ASCE was founded in 1852 (170 years ago!).
There are over 400 student chapters all over the world.
Student chapters can participate in Regional Competitions or Symposiums.
The Steel Bridge Competition and Concrete Canoe Competitions are part of ASCE student chapters.
The ASCE-UPRM student chapter has been the undefeated champion of the US southeast region since 2018.
