ASCE Plot Points Podcast

The best thing you can do for your career is to make consistently smart, thoughtful decisions that align with what you are trying to accomplish in this life.
But what exactly are you trying to accomplish? What makes you happy? Who are you?
Nalah Williams is still early in her career, but she’s already got a great understanding of herself. She’s the owner Golden Mane Property Management in Dallas, Texas; she’s been active in the ASCE Dallas Branch as deputy treasurer and younger member chair; and she’s a past governor of the Construction Institute’s Young Professionals Council.
All of this has been done with an eye on who she is, what she likes, what she doesn’t like, what she’s good at – crucial learning opportunities as she builds her own unique career arc.
In episode 151 of ASCE Plot Points, Williams talks about the experiences that have helped her shape her career and how knowing who she is has guided those decisions.

ities of the Future, a new film for IMAX and giant screens, is on its way.
The second in a partnership between ASCE and MacGillivray Freeman Films, following 2017's rousing success Dream Big: Engineering Our World, the film is scheduled to premiere in early 2024.
Cities of the Future, inspired in part by ASCE's Future World Vision initiative, takes viewers into the future of what's possible for our built environment. Several ASCE members feature in the film, including Paul Lee, a young engineer from Los Angeles who has spent his career fighting climate change through different renewable energy and sustainability projects.
In episode 150 of ASCE Plot Points, Lee talks about his work and what it has been like filming a new movie all around the world.

Julia Williams has never done anything exactly as you might expect.
So when she got her Ph.D. in English, she took a professor job at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and has spent the past decades teaching writing and communication skills to STEM majors.
And now she’s written a book about her experiences innovating and shaking things up in academia. It’s called “Making Changes in STEM Education: The Change Makers Toolkit.”
In episode 149 of ASCE Plot Points, Williams talks about her new book and why teaching communication skills to STEM majors is so important.

Matthew Low is the chief operating officer for Hoyle Tanner and Associates, based in Manchester, New Hampshire, and with regional offices in Florida and throughout New England.
But he didn’t always have his eye on leadership. He grew into it – learning where his specific interests and talents lay and working to build his skillset from there.
In episode 148 of ASCE Plot Points, Low talks about his career path into leadership and why taking proactive steps in your career always is the best plan.

The competition for civil engineering talent right now is well-documented.
And in an industry still coming out of the pandemic shake-up, that means innovation and efficiency are paramount.
In episode 147 of ASCE Plot Points, the Georgia Department of Transportation’s Donn Digamon, a state bridge engineer, and Ahsha McQuain, a civil engineer, talk about how they’ve continued innovating and motivating during the often-tumultuous 2020s.

The 2023 ASCE Architectural Engineering Institute International Student Design Competition challenged student teams to consider a real building – the five-story Kaleideum North in Winston-Salem, North Carolina – and innovatively design it as a living building as it is retrofit into a new children’s museum.
This includes all kinds of considerations – including green design elements, energy performance optimization, and embodied carbon reduction.
And this year, the multidisplinary team from Penn State took first place in two categories – building integration and construction – and second place in the other three categories.
In episode 146 of ASCE Plot Points, Penn State team lead Jordan Kubenik talks about how the Nittany Lions managed such a massive project and how it’s helped her get a jumpstart on her career this summer.

It’s another week of work for Jose Abinazar, a project designer for Gannett Fleming in Miami, Florida.
But the journey to get to this work week wasn’t so simple.
His civil engineering college experience in Venezuela was interrupted; his family fled political turmoil and moved to Miami; Jose had to learn a new language, find a job, find a new school, and start all over again.
But he made it work.
In episode 145 of ASCE Plot Points, Abinazar reflects on his civil engineering story and why he won’t ever stop looking for the next chapter to write.

With the first ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships approaching this weekend, June 10-12 at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville, there is an interesting drama playing out with the University of South Alabama concrete canoe team.
Longtime faculty adviser for the South Alabama ASCE student chapter Eric Steward, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, made a promise to his students a decade ago. If a South Alabama student team ever advanced to a Society-wide competition, he said, he’d commemorate the accomplishment with … a tattoo.
Ten years later, South Alabama has made the finals in steel bridge and concrete canoe.
In episode 144 of ASCE Plot Points, Steward discusses the value in ASCE student competitions and how this tattoo promise is going to play out.

As noted in a recent Civil Engineering magazine article, the civil engineering industry is still sorting out whether work-from-home arrangements established at the outset of the COVID pandemic remain viable as life moves forward into something like normalcy.
For Christopher Seigel, a civil engineer with Sci-Tek Consultants in Philadelphia, working from home has been a net positive.
In episode 143 of ASCE Plot Points, Seigel discusses all angles of working from home for civil engineers and why he thinks it may simply be the way of the future.

This week’s episode of the ASCE Plot Points podcast is the first of what we’re calling Student Sessions. Three ASCE student ambassadors – Alysha Curtis of Fresno State, Peter Yu of the University of Washington, and Evan Brittenham of Western Kentucky University – talk about what thrills them and what intimidates them as they get ready to trade the grad cap for a hardhat.