News Detail

Changing the Way We Communicate

6/1/1999

Much of our world—mine, anyway—seems to revolve around the World Wide Web. Both frustrating and enlightening, it challenges me every time I turn on my computer. But most of all I am impressed with the way it is changing the way I communicate.

I stay in touch with nieces, nephews, and grandchildren almost on a weekly basis, because it’s so easy—type and click. Responses can be short, so it’s fun. Soon we will have voice-activated capabilities, and won’t even have to learn the keyboard.

This new generation is comfortable with the Internet, much as our generations took for granted radio, then television. ACI is benefiting from this major technological evolution in many ways, and it gives us the perfect access to students, specifically those interested in concrete, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

We now have the means, and the resources if we so choose, to reach these young women and men as they are making life decisions. And if not ACI, who else is going to talk to them about concrete?

Faculty network

The Educational Activities Committee has formed a Faculty Network Coordinating Committee, to create an awareness of ACI’s educational materials, committees, and membership benefits among engineering professors and students. The Net will play a large part in their work.

So far, 42 faculty members, each from a different institution, have agreed to serve. This group will not concern itself with curriculum issues but with spreading the word about ACI—marketing us!

Scholarships

ACI offers more than $60,000 annually in scholarship awards to both undergraduate and graduate students:

• The Schwing Company supports 19 scholarships and one graduate fellowship, in honor of specific distributors. The distributors choose the school; the local ACI Chapter chooses the recipients. The schools are Arizona State University, Brown University, Clemson University, Colorado School of Mines, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, University of Houston, Iberoamericana University in Mexico City, Iowa State University, University of Kansas, University of Minnesota, Norwich University in Vermont, University of Southern California (2), Tulane University, Villanova University, Waterloo University in Ontario, and Wayne State University in Detroit (2). HALF of these scholarships are never awarded, generally because of the lack of applicants!
• The Peter Courtois Scholarship goes to a senior, whether full or part time, involved in study relating to concrete construction.
• The Katharine and Bryant Mather, W. R. Grace, and two ACI scholarships go to full-time first or second year graduate students who are involved in any concrete-related subject.
• The V. M. Malhotra Fellowship is awarded to a graduate student in materials science.
• The Stewart Watson Graduate Fellowship is sponsored by the Joints and Bearings Council, for work in that arena.

Most of these ACI scholarships receive sufficient applications and are awarded, but we lack geographical distribution. Much of this is due to the nature of faculty involved in Civil Engineering Departments: If they are "concrete" people, especially "ACI people," there is interest generated. Otherwise, we receive limited response.

The Institute’s scholarship program is a perfect channel for interaction between ACI International and its chapters. Many, indeed, are active in assisting with the Schwing Awards and even offer their own scholarships. We need the names of interested professors and personnel at schools to receive information and applications. Perhaps it is time to join forces with the 336 ASCE student chapters, identifying those schools with concrete curricula and providing support for their programs.

A special thanks goes to FACI Bert Weinberg, who devotes many hours to the scholarship program. He has chaired the ACI Scholarship Council since 1980!

Student competitions

• The Baltimore convention this fall will feature the 20th Annual Cube Strength Competition. The winner of this event produces a prescribed concrete cube with the highest compressive strength.
• Also in Baltimore, ACI will sponsor the FRP Composites Competition. The challenge is to design and construct a concrete beam reinforced with fiber reinforced polymer bars. The beam is subjected to a concentrated load at midspan, and is tested to failure.
• The major competition at the spring convention involves an Egg Protection Device. The goal is to design and build the highest impact-load-resistant plain or reinforced concrete EPD. These imaginative creations are generally dressed to the nines, small arches worthy of museum space. It has proven to be a challenge to break them, to the delight of the audience. (It only took one round to discover that the eggs being protected should be hard boiled!)
• Also, a general Concrete Projects Competition is open to virtually all students.

At the Spring convention in Chicago, there were 110 students attending! It is time for some new competitions to be devised. The Construction Liaison Committee is evaluating a Student Construction Management Competition, and a fiber reinforced concrete competition is also being considered. We need your ideas and creativity to maintain the freshness of this program...for the faculty as well as the students.

I close with two quotations that focus us well on the importance of our student outreach. One is from the February 1, 1999, issue of ENR, an article entitled "Steel Fights Concrete with Technology, Training, Research." Marc Dutil, vice president and general manager of the Steel Plus Network, said: "The steel industry is not gaining ground over concrete because concrete has very strong (trade) associations and investments in education.

And in a 1992 article in Concrete International entitled "National Capital Chapter Starts Mentor Program for Students," author Debby Cagley (now Orsak) says: "Knowing that concrete is the major construction material for the future, we need to plant proper seeds to encourage students to take an interest in concrete and participate in the growth of the concrete industry...If we have a better prepared new generation of engineers, they can help make things easier for the older generations."

Enough said!

Jo Coke
President
American Concrete Institute

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