News Detail

Thanks for Funding Our Future

2/3/2014

I invite you to participate in a very special event. On Monday, March 24, at the ACI Spring 2014 convention in Reno, NV, the ACI Foundation will host a dinner to express gratitude to the founders and funders of one of the Institute’s most successful programs: the ACI Student Fellowship Program.

The Tribute to the Fellowship Founders Dinner will salute Dan Baker of Baker Concrete Construction, Jim Cagley of Cagley & Associates, and Tom Verti of Pankow and the Pankow Foundation, along with many other donors who generously gave resources to endow the ACI Student Fellowship Program. Dan, Jim, and Tom are outstanding examples of the spirit of mentoring and giving that is at the core of the ACI Student Fellowship program.

ACI has a long history of investing in scholarships. It was during Dan Baker’s term as ACI President in 2001 that a mentoring initiative was launched to foster high-potential students into concete industry professionals by supporting their further academic and professional development and encouraging them to become active and involved ACI members. Set in motion by the Concrete Research and Education Foundation, which would later be reorganized as the ACI Foundation, the new program was created to offer scholarship money and more. Through mentoring and internship opportunities, students are immersed in the concrete industry and get introduced to the ACI community and its technical activities.

The internship component of the ACI Student Fellowship has been instrumental in achieving the goal of nurturing students toward a specialization in concrete design or construction. The ACI Baker Student Fellowship, the ACI Elmer Baker Student Fellowship, the Charles Pankow Foundation ACI Student Fellowship (established in 2007), and the Cagley ACI Student Fellowship (established in 2008) provide opportunities for students to gain real-world engineering experience. ACI Past Presidents Tom Verti and Jim Cagley have also served as mentors to ACI Student Fellowship recipients.

As you will learn on March 24, the program has been an extraordinary success. Since the first ACI Student Fellowship recipients were chosen in 2002, 56 high-potential students have been identified and guided along their career paths. Today, nearly 90% of the Student Fellowship recipients are active members and contributors to the advancement of the concrete community. Of this group, 48% are engineers,26% are professors, 19% are still students, 5% are researchers, and 2% are principals of their own firms.

Twelve of the ACI Student Fellowship recipients have contributed a total of 45 authored or coauthored papers, articles, and presentations to the ACI technical database. Consider the research by Raissa D. Ferron, Assistant Professor, University of Texas (Fellowship recipient 2002-2003), on a biomimetic approach to cement-based materials; or look into the work by Lisa Feldman, Associate Professor, University of Saskatchewan, and member of ACI Committee 318 (Fellowship recipient 2005-2006), on the behavior of lap-spliced plain steel bars; or read the paper co-authored by David Tepke, Consultant, SKAConsulting Engineers, Inc. (Fellowship recipient 2001-2002), on “The Effects of Blended Cements on Concrete Porosity, Chloride Permeability, and Resistivity.” The program works!

Please join us March 24 in Reno, NV, in person or via social media, at the Tribute to the Fellowship Founders Dinner to show appreciation for everyone who helps support this program and learn about the program outcomes that benefit each and every one of us. Thank you, Dan, Jim, and Tom.

Anne M. Ellis