Rector students to compete at engineering conference

Natalie Sigsby, Nathan Haynes and Alex Roofe of Rector, all civil engineering majors at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, will be among ASU engineering students in the university's student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) participating Thursday through Saturday, March 26-28, in the 2009 Deep South Conference, hosted by ASU.

The event will include 12 other universities and will be held in the Convocation Center and at Craighead Forest Park.

ASCE is a student organization which meets and competes annually in various events, including steel bridge, concrete canoe, surveying, environmental and a mystery category. Technical essays and presentations also are a portion of the competition.

Sigsby will compete in the women's endurance, women's sprint and co-ed concrete canoe races and serves as student chair of the environmental engineering competition. Roofe will compete in the concrete canoe men's endurance race, and Haynes will compete in surveying.

Other universities taking part in this year's event are Christian Brothers University, Jackson State University, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana State University, Louisiana Tech University, McNeese State University, University of Memphis, University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, University of New Orleans, Southern University and University of Tennessee-Martin.

Arkansas State's chapter is advised by Dr. Tom Parsons, professor and director of Civil Engineering.

"The Deep South region consists of universities from eastern Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and western Tennessee," said Brad

Marotti, president of ASU's ASCE student chapter."This annual event allows the regional chapters to develop networking skills while participating in educational competition. The conference is held at each university once every 10 years, and this year is ASU's turn."

Arkansas State won back-to-back regional championships (2002-03) and is eight-time national competitors in steel bridge building.

The conference gets underway Thursday, March 26, with registration from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Convocation Center with a business meeting to follow at 7 p.m. Events start Friday (March 27) at 7:30 a.m. in the Convocation Center with a steel bridge aesthetics setup, followed by a captain's meeting and the setup of concrete canoe presentations.

Steel bridge competition runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., while concrete canoe presentation will be held from noon to 4 p.m. Environmental competition also begins at noon.

Friday's competition also includes the Mead paper which follows the "2009 National Daniel W. Mead Student Contest." The topic is "Sustainability and Civil Engineering," and participants are requested to write a paper to be formally presented at the conference.

Saturday's events shift to Craighead Park Forest, and the day opens with the concrete canoe competition setup beginning at 7 a.m. A canoe captain meeting and aesthetics judging of the concrete canoes is at 8 a.m. Surveying competition runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and a mystery competition is from 9 to 11:30 a.m.

In the mystery competition, engineering students are asked to use materials provided to them to accomplish a given task, interact with fellow students, build team work, and have fun. The task will be assigned at the time of competition.

For more information, contact Dr. Tom Parsons or Dr. Rick Clifft at 870-972-2088 or through e-mail at tparsons@astate.edu or rclifft@astate.edu.