On March 25, 2021, the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) announced the 2021 Letter of Significant Improvement of the International Student Organization of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE-ISG). The Dalian University of Technology ASCE Student Chapter (hereinafter referred to as the Student Chapter) became the only student chapter to get this honor. The pointed out that in the past year, the student chapter has made great progress in carrying out various student activities. In addition, ASCE fully affirmed the efforts and contributions made by the Student Chapter and wished the Student Chapter achieve greater achievements in its future development.
The Student Chapter was established in July 2016 and obtained ASCE official certification in January 2019, making it the seventh officially authorized ASCE student chapter in mainland China. The fundamental nature of the Student Chapter is competition and communication. In terms of competition, in the early stage of establishment, the Student Chapter focused on US competitions and other international competitions. During the period, the Student Chapter sent team members to participate in the ASCE Student Competitions, EERI Seismic Competition, and many other events. They all achieved excellent results. However, due to the emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic and changes in the international situation, the foothold of the development of the student chapter had to be changed, and the original method of relying on external competition development was restricted. Therefore, the Student Chapter proposed a new development route-a development method that combines internal and external cycles, that is, not only relying on external competition for development, but also using the own advantages for internal development. To this end, the Student Chapter has carried out various activities ingeniously, such as using the Student Chapter members’ mastery of professional software for software instruction, and using the Student Chapter’s good study atmosphere to conduct academic salons. In terms of communication, the Student Chapter has been invited to conduct academic exchanges with many well-known civil engineering colleges and universities at home and abroad, such as Tongji University, Southeast University, and University of California, Berkeley. The Student Chapter has successfully held the 5th ASCE-ISG Greater China Annual Conference in 2018; it has sent student representatives to Yokohama National University and New Zealand for academic exchanges in 2019; and has held academic exchange seminars with Saitama University in 2019 and 2020.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, the Student Chapter still operated with high-efficiency. The Student Chapter held online structural design competitions, and gave instruction on the operation of Rstab, Rhino and other professional software for the competition, which cleared the technical barriers for students to participate in the online competition. Meanwhile, the Student Chapter continuously organized online presentation of each group weekly, communicating with each other about existing problems and putting forward suggestions for solutions. The success in holding the online structural design competition heralded the beginning of the chapter's internal cycles. When entering the normalized offline teaching process, the Student Chapter continued to work to strengthen cooperation among international universities, and conduct online seminars with universities such as Saitama University in Japan. At the meeting, many professors from Dalian University of Technology and Saitama University pioneered many ideas for the future of the civil engineering field, which broadened the international vision of the participating undergraduates.
In November, representatives of the Student Chapter participated in the ASCE-ISG Greater China online annual meeting and presented the basic status and development plan of the Student Chapter in the report, and creatively proposed a new way of development in the post-epidemic era—internal and external cycles with online and offline communication, showing the determination and perseverance of the future development of the Student Chapter. After the annural meeting, the Student Chapter held a structural design competition for freshmen for the first time. The comptition combined intrest with professionalism, laying the foundation for the development of structural design for the students in the university.
The Student Chapter has always been committed to relying on the information and resources from the Academic Affairs Office, International Cooperation and Exchange Office, Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering and many other channels to comprehensively build and improve academic exchange platforms, training and practice platforms, professional competition platforms, and dynamic feedback platforms. In order to cultivate students' professional interest and enthusiasm, to promote study of professional course, to broaden students' international vision, and to improve the quality of talent training, the Student Chapter strives to meet the goal of combination of learning and academics, integration of competition and professionalism, cohesion of internship and practice, and connection of home and abroad , so as to achieve the goal of cultivating the new generation of civil engineers.
