A team of engineering students from Missouri State University placed 3rd in the surveying competition at the 2024 Mid-America ASCE Student Symposium. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) consists of 10 regions with 21 student conferences all over the world.  

MSU’s chapter falls into region 7. In this region, 20 chapters get together and compete in a wide range of competitions. These competitions focus on topics in engineering and technology.  

This year, MSU and Missouri S&T chapters co-hosted the event in Rolla, which took place April 18-20.  

Dr. Sanjay Tewari, faculty member in MSU’s cooperative engineering program, attended the symposium with a team of five MSU students — Braedan Crocker, Erik Netzer, Ogochukwu Ede, Olga Tatar and Sydney Bond. 

“The symposium provides a platform for students to compete,” Tewari said. “They test their abilities, technical knowledge and skills that are essential for a successful career in the field.”  

“Setting a solid foundation and providing excellent education with a variety of great experiences is the focus of CNAS,” Tewari said. “I think our students succeeding against 18 different universities and bringing home honors is a proof that CNAS is on the right track, and we’re fulfilling our mission.” 

About the competition 

The surveying competition has three parts.  

The first focuses on computer–related civil engineering knowledge and skills. The second is a presentation to a panel of judges made up of industry experts and a large student audience. The third part tests students’ on-field skills such as their ability to use various surveying instruments accurately and under time constraints. 

For this year’s competition, students received a real-life problem with an abstract description. They were asked to process the data and produce a map with digital elevation. 

During the third part, each team had to navigate a field course and solely rely on the known properties of a starting point to come up with an accurate measure of the ending point and the course in between.  

Although Tatar has been studying engineering for a few years, this was her first competition in engineering. She took the lead for the computer-based part.  She spent weeks going through a challenging set of data points and prepared the final solution. 

“The experience was eye opening and has fueled me to become even more involved in our chapter,” said Tatar, a sophomore civil engineering major. “Next year, we plan to come back even stronger.” 

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