Over 30 members of Missouri University of Science and Technology’s student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers competed at the Mid-America Student Symposium this April in Nebraska. This year’s regional symposium was cohosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Missouri S&T’s students competed against teams from 16 other Midwestern universities, bringing home the trophy as the overall symposium winners, and the Steel Bridge Design Team will advance to a national competition next month 

For the Concrete Canoe competition, student teams design and build a canoe out of concrete, present a proposal to judges as if they are bidding on a project, and test the canoe (and their own skills) in a series of races. Points are awarded for project proposal, technical presentation and the product prototype, in addition to the race results. Missouri S&T’s team won all five races by 20 seconds or more, coming in third in the competition overall. 

Students from S&T also placed third in the Sustainable Solutions competition, which challenges engineering students to incorporate sustainability principles into engineering projects. This year’s challenge was to present a proposal for adapting a hypothetical area of underused office buildings into mixed-use structures, taking the local environment and new infrastructure needs into account.  

Missouri S&T students won the symposium’s FE Quiz Bowl, scoring highest on the preliminary multiple-choice test before dominating the Jeopardy-style final round with over twice as many points as the second-place university. The quiz bowl questions are modeled after the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying’s Fundamentals of Engineering exam, part of the process of becoming a licensed professional engineer. 

The Steel Bridge competition requires students to design a scale model of a bridge, spanning around 20 feet and capable of holding 2,500 pounds, based on a real-world problem. This year’s challenge was to design a bridge over the South Skunk River in Iowa to connect walking trails in a park. The S&T team came in first in construction speed, construction economy, lightness, stiffness, structural efficiency and cost estimation, earning first place overall in the competition.  

The Steel Bridge Design Team will compete at the Student Steel Bridge Competition National Finals this May at Iowa State University.  

About Missouri University of Science and Technology 

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.