Finalized Theme Concept

First off, thank you to everyone that assisted with the 2011 Conference theme ideas. At the ASCE meeting today (04/20/10), a final theme concept was voted on and approved:

Green Your Routine

As of now, this concept is open to subtle editorial modifications. Some possible modifications include:

• Green Your Engineering Routine
• Engineer(ing) Your Green Routine
  

An absolute final theme will be decided by the ASCE officers and Conference organizing committee, based upon comments received by May 1st. This is your window of opportunity so I encourage everyone to make your voice heard.

Banquet Ideas

For the Saturday night awards banquet, the organizing committee would like to make this an exciting and enticing event. With that in mind, some topics open for brainstorming include:

Location (all outside under tents, and heated, if necessary):

• Sherlock Park
• Del Monaco Winery
  

Backup Location (in event of severe weather)

• UC Multipurpose Room (food in shifts) and awards at the Hoop
• Leslie Towne Center (in shifts) and awards elsewhere
  

After Awards Activities:

• Live band
• Games (corn hole, horseshoes, etc.)
  

Trophy Competition

There has been some discussion about teams making trophies out of recycled materials as a competition. While I believe this is generally a very good concept, there are some potential disadvantages which should be discussed now before progressing.

Playing devil's advocate:

• What if some of the trophy designs are really bad? Would you want to receive an ugly trophy?
• How would we decide which competition gets the 1st place and last place trophy designs?
  
• What if less than 10-12 teams actually participate? There is potential that this could be cost prohibitive for some schools.
  
• Would some teams be unhappy to potentially receive an "non-professional" trophy? Some of the smaller schools rely on trophies as demonstration of what they do for ABET accreditation.

Some of these concerns could be eliminated by only giving away the top three trophies, as has been mentioned. This would need to be explicitly stated.

Tentative Competitions

Concrete Canoe
Steel Bridge - Henderson/Huo/Liu (Tim Harell)
Professional Paper - Badoe
Hydraulics/Hydrology - Hossain
Environmental - Weathers
Concrete - Crouch (Samanta Jeffries)
Transportation - S. Click
Concrete Horseshoes - Mohr
Geotech - Ryan
Balsa - Ramirez
Surveying - L. Click
T-Shirt - S. Click/Hossain
Mystery - S. Click/Hossain
Engineering Outreach - S. Click/Hossain
Community Service (Sustainability)

If you are interested in assisting with a particular competition rules writing, please contact me.

Community Involvement and Service Ideas

Tennessee's Wild Side coverage - http://tnwildside.org/

Cookeville Library – special display on civil engineering books for all ages

Cookeville History Museum and Cookeville Children’s Museum – special display on history of civil engineering in Upper Cumberland area (e.g., construction of I-40, Center Hill Dam/Lake)

Integration of Visual Display competition on Friday with TTU STEM Center and Putnam County Schools

Sustainability drive – increase recycling (provide containers for residents/more recycling centers in Cookeville and TTU), reduce energy consumption (coordinate with TVA), reduce water consumption, promote green concrete technology

Theme Ideas

Conference theme ideas:

GREENgineering - Potential trademark legal issues
Green Your Routine
Think Green
Engineering Your (Our) Green Routine
Engineering Your (A) (Our) Green Future
Please post comments. Let's get this finalized!!

And this was finalized 04/20/10...please refer to more recent post.