Monthly Archives: September 2013

Environmental, Events

Community Service Event: Vine St. Elementary Edible Garden

A group of USC ASCE members got up early on this Saturday morning to help completely rebuild an edible garden at Vine St. Elementary School. Tomás O’Grady of Enrich LA led a team of about 80 volunteers to clear out the old, unmaintained garden and build new raised beds, an irrigation system, a wooden fence, and picnic tables. After six hours in the sun, construction was complete and other groups began planting a variety of vegetables. We got valuable experience that will benefit our design teams’ work, including sanding (we’ll sand our concrete canoe), staining (also staining the canoe), and piping a irrigation system (our environmental design team’s system consists of pipes). Overall, it was a great experience, and we hope to be able to participate in another similar event soon!

  • We started by sanding wood for picnic tables.
  • Sanding wood
  • Water break
  • Sanding part of the fencing
  • Fence sanding
  • Carrying a section of fencing
  • Carrying a section of fencing
  • Sanding the fence
  • Break time
  • At least someone‘s working…
  • Stacking wood to be finished
  • Lunch break USC group shot
  • Staining/Finishing the wood for the picnic benches
  • Sealing wood
  • Brushing off a tabletop
  • Staining the benches
  • We also helped assemble the piping for the new irrigation system.
  • Members of last year’s environmental design team got lots of experience with piping, so they were perfect for this project!
  • Rosa glues piping together
  • Assembling the irrigation system in-place
  • Staining/sealing the fencing
  • The whole garden project. There were several other large groups in addition to our group from USC ASCE.
  • Installing the irrigation system.
  • Shoveling dirt
  • Shoveling dirt
  • A low angle across the new raised garden beds, while installing the irrigation system
  • Some creative pipework!
  • Assembling the last few pieces of the irrigation system.
  • Part of the nearly-complete irrigation system
  • Beginning to back-fill dirt over the irrigation system
  • The USC ASCE group, with project lead Thomàs O’Grady
  • The Garden’s progress right before our departure.
  • The USC group
  • USC group in front of the garden, as the raised beds are prepared for planting.
Meetings

First General Meeting Summary

Thanks to everyone who joined us at our first meeting!

We had a great turnout, with 65+ students in attendance. I know several people wanted to attend but couldn’t, so you can use this post to catch up on what you missed. There are some useful links for those who were there too.

At the meeting we said that membership forms would be available on our website very soon, you can now find them through the membership page. You should also subscribe to our calendars.

  • Getting all of the food ready
  • Waiting for food, and the start of the meeting
  • Food!
  • We started with 12 pizzas, finished with 0.
  • Almost ready to start presenting.
  • Elise introduces ASCE.
  • We had a big audience…
  • People were literally flowing out the door!
  • Daniel waits out side with a piece of last year’s bridge.
  • Evan talks about membership dues.
  • Daniel talks about Steel Bridge.
  • Winston talks about PSWC.
  • Rosa talks about our upcomming events.
  • Attentive Audience
  • Elise wraps up
  • Questions

After the main portion of the meeting, where we explained what ASCE and USC ASCE are, as well as talking about all of the different things we do, we had a brief activity for those who could stay. The assignment: create the tallest possible tower out of six sheets of (re-used!) paper and nothing else (no tape, glue, paperclips, etc.). Oh, and they had to be wind-resistant too. We had some pretty creative results!

Someone requested that we post our presentation slides, so here they are (minus our special fonts) if you want to review what we went over or in case you missed the meeting!

Remember the slideshow of images we had playing before and after our presentation? It’s actually just a page on our website that make a slideshow of all of the pictures we’ve uploaded here. Check it out!

Don’t forget about our upcoming events: PSWC Info Sessions Thursday 9/12 from 5:30-6 or 6-6:30 or Friday 9/13 from 12-12:30 (all three cover the same information and focus on our design teams) and our First Guest Speaker Meeting Monday 9/16 from 6:30-8. Make sure you join our mailing list for updates!