KU Engineering students take home several awards at concrete canoe, steel bridge competitions
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas Department of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering student groups took home several awards at the 2025 ASCE Symposium earlier this month. The KU chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Concrete Canoe program, is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the Steel Bridge program also traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, to take part in their respective competitions.
The Concrete Canoe team took home several awards, including first place in project proposal, second place in technical presentation and second place overall for the competition.
“The team’s technical report was so amazing,” said Arrington Farmer, graduate in architectural engineering and graduate adviser for the program, from Edwardsville, Illinois. “I think it was the best one I’ve seen, and I’m super proud of them. They really knocked it out of the park this year.”
As part of the competition, the Concrete Canoe team not only had to race the canoe in Holmes Lake at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln but also had to present a comprehensive business proposal to judges regarding the cost-effectiveness and construction practices involved in producing the canoe.
Their theme, Jayhawk’s Revenge, stems from the program’s continued dedication to improving the canoe. Dominic Arbini, junior in architectural engineering and Concrete Canoe captain from Fenton, Missouri, plans on taking next year’s canoe all the way to the top.
“We continue to try to push ourselves to be the best team we can be,” Arbini said. “This year, we really put an emphasis on working together, looking at our weaknesses and trying to strengthen them as much as possible to take revenge for the mistakes we’ve made in the past and push toward a better team.”
The KU Steel Bridge team also placed well in this year’s competition, taking home several awards, including second place in aesthetics and third place in structural efficiency, stiffness and cost estimation. The team took home fifth overall.
The Steel Bridge program was designed to provide KU engineering students with an opportunity to work and compete on a nationally competitive design team. Students involved in the program are able to develop teamwork and communication skills necessary in the workplace, steel fabrication skills, computer-aided design experience and more.
“I am extremely proud of our team’s accomplishments this year,” said John Holt, graduate student in civil engineering and Steel Bridge fabrication lead from Lawrence. “The path to making it to the competition was fraught with challenges, but through all the obstacles, our team pulled together. We have improved greatly as a club and will continue our path of improvement and success into next year.”
In this competition, each student team develops a concept for a scale-model steel bridge to span approximately 20 feet and to carry 2,500 pounds. The team must determine how to fabricate its bridge and plan for an efficient assembly under timed construction conditions. Finished bridges are load-tested, weighed and judged on aesthetics.
“KU Steel Bridge has come a long way in the past two years, and our team’s successes at the competition this year are a great reflection of that,” said Brian McGuire, senior in civil engineering and Steel Bridge president from Edgerton. “We walked away from the competition with awards in four of the eight categories. I can’t wait to see what the team will accomplish in the future.”
The KU ASCE Chapter also took home second in the Transportation Competition, where teams were given a complex design challenge on the day of the competition and tasked to propose a solution in a five-minute proposal, including submittal materials. Teams were judged by a panel of traffic engineering and highway design experts.
“I am really proud of how we placed in the transportation competition this year,” said Mandy Gibbs, junior in civil engineering and KU ASCE chapter president from Leawood. “This is reflective of our overall growth as a student organization as we continue to bring more students to the symposium every year. The range of competitions allows everyone to compete and showcase the skills they have learned from KU.”
Catherine Kipp, a junior in civil engineering from Omaha, Nebraska, was awarded first place in the Student Symposium Paper Competition. Her paper, “The Role of Ethics in Infrastructure,” explored the responsibility of engineers to prevent infrastructure disasters, assist in disaster recovery and advocate for stronger safety standards within their organizations and for the profession as a whole. It further discusses how engineers can fulfill these responsibilities by following the ASCE Code of Ethics.
“Engineering ethics is a topic I am very passionate about, so I was grateful to have the opportunity to write about it and represent my school with my communication skills — an overlooked but essential quality for engineers to possess,” Kipp said.
The ASCE Mid-America Student Symposium is one of 22 ASCE regional student symposia held annually as an opportunity for student chapters to showcase their skills and achievements in various civil engineering activities. The Mid-America Region includes 17 universities from Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota. KU is scheduled to host the ASCE Student Symposium in 2027.