From buildings, roads, and bridges to technology for a cleaner environment, civil engineers are at the core of modern society. However, designing and building such large infrastructure is a significant undertaking that is difficult to prepare students for.
“There are not as many opportunities in civil engineering as there are in other engineering disciplines to get hands-on experience and test what they’re designing,” said Alyssa DeSimone, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at GW. This is where the GW Engineering chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) comes in.
Designed to advance civil engineering students’ careers and foster a tight-knit community at GW Engineering, the local chapter offers unique experiential learning opportunities through project-based competition teams, such as Steel Bridge and Sustainable Solutions. Each spring, they join other universities at the ASCE Mid-Atlantic Student Symposium to network and show off the months of hard work they put into these projects.
Ethics First in Civil Engineering
Before students can compete in these hands-on challenges, ASCE requires each chapter to participate in its Ethics Paper Competition to reinforce the idea that ethical considerations are central to every civil engineering project.
“The prompt this year asked us to focus on how civil engineers can recognize the cultural, historical, and social needs of a community while designing and planning infrastructure projects,” said Grace Nowicki, B.S. ‘26, former GW chapter president who has presented on the chapter’s behalf for the past two years.
Nowicki began by detailing a project that caused harm by neglecting community needs in the design process, then showcased two examples that did the opposite. Drawing on the Cross Bronx Expressway in New York City and the 11th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., she proposed a two-step process for engineers to ensure future projects provide community benefits rather than further existing equity gaps.
First, Nowicki encourages civil engineers to familiarize themselves with past social equity to identify neighborhoods that may experience more negative impacts from a project. Second, she advises taking action to mitigate harm through community engagement, pointing to the Cross Bronx Expressway’s participatory budget model as a strong example, as it allows the community to propose the infrastructure projects they want to see implemented in their area.
Designing Sustainable Infrastructure
Ethical decision-making was also front and center in the Sustainable Solutions Competition. At the intersection of sustainability, technology, and community impact, the prompt focused on today’s hot-button issue of balancing the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) with the environmental and community impacts of data center design.
Led by captains Sophia Miller and Jolie Schwartz, both B.S. ‘26, the GW Engineering team collaborated to reduce environmental impact at every stage. They quickly realized that a data center’s high energy consumption makes it hard to be entirely sustainable. Accordingly, technical design incorporated renewable energy, water-efficient cooling systems, reclaimed water, low-carbon construction materials, and resilient infrastructure.
Like Nowicki’s paper, the Miller-Schwartz team placed a strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement, working to ensure the project will provide local jobs and educational opportunities. They selected Minnesota as the location because its cooler climate reduces cooling demand, while state incentives make the project economically viable thanks to tax cuts for sustainability.
While she feels engineering classes at GW provided the technical foundation needed to tackle such a complex project, Miller shared that no single course covered the specific sustainability strategies they relied on. For instance, this project exposed them to the Envision Sustainable Infrastructure Framework, a decision-making tool that helps engineers plan, design, and deliver more sustainable and equitable infrastructure projects.
“More than anything, my coursework taught me how to research, learn new concepts, and solve problems that don’t have obvious answers. Engineering teaches you perseverance, and this project was challenging,” Miller said.
Turning Concepts Into Structures
Beyond sustainability, the Steel Bridge Competition offers a different but equally rewarding opportunity: turning design concepts into a 20-foot steel structure. Each year, the team begins by designing a bridge from scratch following ASCE specifications during the fall semester.
In the spring, the action shifts to the machine shop, where students spend three days a week measuring, cutting, cold-bending, milling, welding, drilling, assembling, filing, painting, and testing their creations. Lucy Truemper, B.S. ‘26, one of three team captains alongside Mia Carlson, B.S. ‘26, and rising senior Kade Wilson, shared how working directly with machinery and materials has strengthened her confidence and problem-solving skills, and helped her “better visualize how designs are actually built.”
Wilson echoed, “While fabricating the bridge, you understand more about how the material can be used and what you can and can’t do with it. This is important for a design engineer to know because your designs have to be feasible for the material you’re working with.”
Together with the rest of the fabrication team, they developed systems and standards for each step of the process. They rely not only on their CEE coursework, such as Statics and Solids, Structural Analysis, Metal Structures, and Mechanics of Solids, but also on each other, sharing lessons learned through trial and error to ensure precise, reliable results.
Competition day brings stress as months of hard work are put to the test, with bridges judged on assembly speed and sway. However, it is also a time for celebration. The GW Engineering team cheers every win, big or small, and teams from other schools offer camaraderie and new ideas to improve their design and fabrication processes for next year.
A Supportive Community at GW
While drawn in by the opportunity to build a prototype of the large structures they may work on in their careers, students stay committed to the GW ASCE chapter because of the community they find here. This spirit of mutual support through mentorship and collaboration is what turns individual effort into shared achievements.
Students build even stronger relationships by participating in hands-on ASCE competitions that test their leadership, teamwork, and communication skills. As captains of the Sustainable Solutions and Steel Bridge teams, Miller, Truemper, and Wilson each spoke about how this experience has shown them that strong leadership requires open listening, clear communication, and the empowerment of others.
Even as a solo competitor, Nowicki is not alone as the entire GW chapter helps her refine ideas and provide feedback. She also relied heavily on Vice President Ivy Morovati, who worked closely with her throughout the research and writing process.
“Successful engineering projects depend not only on technical knowledge but also trust, teamwork, and the ability to bring together different perspectives to solve complex problems,” said Miller.