After a successful day at the beach with canoe races, sports, and more, we all gathered for a special team dinner.
Category Archives: PSWC
PSWC 2014 Day 1: Canoe & Bridge Aesthetics
PSWC 2014 Started off with a beautiful day of Concrete Canoes and Steel Bridges on display!
Early-morning assembly at the hotel. 
Full trailer waiting to be unloaded. 
We’re here! 
Waiting to unload the trailer. 
The team prepares to lift the canoe out of its cradle. 
Carrying the canoe out of the trailer. 
Bringing the canoe onto campus. 
Bringing the canoe to our display area. 
Carrying the canoe to our display. 
Setting the canoe down on temporary stands. 
USC engineers ready for a busy day. 
Carrying a canoe stand to our display area… 
It’s WALL-E! 
Wheeling a several-hundred-pound rock to our display area to hold the canoe. 
Placing the canoe stands. 
Preparing to flip the canoe over. 
Carefully inverting the canoe for display. 
Attaching WALL-E’s feet. 
Assembling the steel bridge for display. 
Assembling the steel bridge for display. 
We need another small piece of wood – good thing we brought a saw! 
USC ASCE NASA-style logo on our Space Shuttle Cutaway Section. 
Completed canoe display. 
Fully-assembled bridge. 
Partial Canoe Team with DiSCovery II. 
Our final product display table and space shuttle canoe cut-away section. 
Our canoe cut-away section: a space shuttle. 
Selfie with WALL-E! 
DiSCovery II on display. 
Our 2014 Steel Bridge on display. 
Nicole with DiSCovery II. 
Canoe team display. 
DiSCovery II with its asteroid and WALL-E display stands. 
Our 2014 Steel Bridge. 
“The orientation of our canoe display creates a space where exhausted students can rest in its cast shadow.” – a building science student 
Everyone loves WALL-E! 
Nicole with our Final Product Display. 
People view our canoe and bridge displays. 
Not-the-canoe-team with one of our practitioner advisors. 
DiSCovery II and the final product display. 
Canoe Display. 
Space Shuttle Cut-away Section. 
Space Shuttle Cut-away Section. 
Space Shuttle Cut-away Section. 
DiSCovery II on display. 
Our 2014 Steel Bridge on display. 
Everyone loves WALL-E! 
Our canoe captains deliver the oral presentation. 
Carrying the canoe back to the trailer, to rest before tomorrow’s races.
PSWC 2014 Day 1: Basketball Tournament
Our Basketball team won their first-round game in the PSWC 2014 basketbll tournament, earning us top-eight points for the overall PSWC rankings.
Team meeting during a timeout. 
Heavily contested shot. 
Nicole goes up for a pass. 
Basketball team photo. 
Basketball team celebrates their first-round victory.
PSWC 2014 Day 1: Environmental Competiton
Our environmental team successfully completed their water treatment challenge to remove nitrate and phosphorus from a water sample, earning 5th place in a field of 15 schools.
Environmental captains strategize for their competition. 
Preparing for the start of the competition. 
Preparing to pour the water into the system. 
Preparing to pour the water into the system for treatment. 
Pouring the water into the system for treatment. 
The system beings to treat the water. 
Daphne shows off our low-cost, sustainable, water-treatment system. 
Checking the time elapsed. 
Waiting for the water treatment system to do its work. 
Environmental presentation team. 
Environmental Design Team.
PSWC 2014 Day 1: Mystery Event
Mystery event is an event where we send several of our members to the competition where they proceed to compete in several challenges that were not previously announced. This year’s team had a blast, fully embracing the spirit of the competition.
Team huddle selfie. 
Many-legged-race practice. 
6-person, 7-legged race. 
Environmental team captains cheer on the mystery event team. 
Strategizing session between rounds. 
Water balloon catching bullseye. 
Everyone jumps for a water balloon. 
Water balloon catch. 
PSWC 2014 Day 1: Family Feud Quiz
This year’s PSWC quiz event challenged students with an individual scan-tron-style quiz on engineering topics in the qualification round. After tying for second (out of 18 schools) in the qualifications, we advanced to the more energetic Family Feud tournament for the final rounds. We named “Occupations That Begin With the Letter ‘A,’” but had trouble thinking of “Things You Do With Two Hands.”
Family Feud Quiz Team. 
Watching other schools compete in the Family Feud tournament. 
Preparing to compete in family feud. 
Competing in Family Feud. 
Family Feud Quiz Team. 
Our quiz team may not be as cool as they think they are, but they are pretty smart.
PSWC 2014 Day 1: Surveying
Even though our surveying team was completely new this year, our 2014 Surveying team placed 7th in their competition!
The surveying competition was held in a… remote… area of campus. 
Can you spot the surveyors? 
Surveying team. 
Captain Kelvin is the only one who’s done this before. 
Lucy and Ben measure something. 
Ben may or may not be confused about what he’s supposed to be doing. 
Having fun surveying. 
Measuring something. 
Final PSWC 2014 Preparations
All of our design teams are busy with last-minute preparations for PSWC 2014. We’re off to San Diego tonight, excited to compete!
Ben grinds down a piece of the steel bridge. 
Ben grinds down a piece of the bridge. 
The Steel Bridge team prepares to practice assembling their bridge. 
The Steel Bridge team practices assembling their bridge. 
Kelly holds the results of a failed concrete bowling ball test. 
The Concrete Bowling Ball awaits its paint job. 
The Environmental team’s system goes through a test run. 
Cleaning the basement canoe area. 
The space shuttle cut-away section, complete with cardinal red steel stands made from last year’s steel bridge. 
Kelly and Lucy assemble the final product display table. 
Admiring the completed canoe-staining. 
DiSCovery II awaits its lettering. 
Lucy applies a second coat of paint to the canoe letters. 
Jake paints canoe letters. 
Erin paints “Southern” onto the canoe. 
Carefully painting lettering onto DiSCovery II. 
Painting on the canoe & university name. 
Erin paints lettering onto the canoe. 
Touching up the canoe lettering. 
Erin and Jessica discuss the status of the canoe finishing. 
Jessica and Erin paint “DiSCovery II” onto the canoe. 
Jessica carefully touches up the canoe lettering. 
Painting lettering onto the canoe. 
Removing a lettering stencil from the canoe. 
Watching paint dry. 
Touching up the canoe lettering. 
Erin cuts out labels for the concrete aggregate samples for the display table. 
Jessica goes into full-on artist mode while staining the canoe. 
All of USC ASCE’s equipment and creations are safely packed into the U–Haul to head to San Diego. 
WALL-E Looks over DiSCovery II and the rest of our gear in the U-Haul.
PSWC 2014 Planning Underway
Our USC ASCE team for PSWC 2014 has been finalized. We’ll be bringing 43 of our members to San Diego State University from April 2-6 to compete against 17 other universities in concrete canoe, steel bridge, environmental, geotechnical, surveying, technical paper, concrete bowling, scavenger hunt, sports teams, and several other events.
We’re finalizing details of our travel plans now, while also organizing the smaller competition teams. Once we have all of individual schedules and teams filled out, team captains will coordinate meetings/practices to prepare for victory!
Our design teams can always use more help to design and build the concrete canoe, steel bridge, water treatment system, and geowall. Even if you aren’t attending PSWC this year, you can make a big impact on our teams and help propel them to win!
Check out our calendars for updates on all of our meeting times and info for getting involved!
PSWC 2013 Summary
We’ve all recovered from PSWC 2013 (the ASCE Pacific Southwest Regional Conference) and are ready for a final summary. This year we co-hosted the conference, with most of the events taking place on the USC campus. Despite the added commitments of hosting, we were competitive in many events and made several improvements over last year.
Environmental Design Team
Our big win was our environmental team’s 1st Place finish! The team worked long hours and it paid off. Multiple design iterations, a large team, and excellent leadership enabled the group’s success. Since most of the team isn’t graduating yet, including the captains, we expect a strong showing for next year as well.
Our Environmental Design Team poses with their water distribution system at the PSWC 2013 Environmental Competition at Pardee Plaza on the USC Campus.
Concrete Canoe Team
Our Concrete Canoe made big improvements over our last several years’. For our seniors, this was the first time our canoe survived all the way until the final, coed race, when four people must race in the canoe at once. Naturally, our primary senior leaders celebrated our success by all racing together for the first time. Our final product was extremely buoyant and only faced minimal cracking issues (except during transportation). While we may not have had the prettiest canoe, it improved significantly over last year’s in aesthetics and we expect to improve further in coming years with the help of a larger team, better year-to-year knowledge transfer, and additional funding. A total of five schools were unable to race their canoes by midway through race day this year, so our solid (if heavy) canoe represents a huge accomplishment.
The Concrete Canoe Team poses with their USC-themed canoe, SC Traveler, after successfully finishing all five races at PSWC 2013.
Photo © 2013 Lance Hill
Steel Bridge Team
The Steel Bridge Team also completed a successful final product at PSWC 2013. Our bridge team is also young this year and only one team member (our head captain) is graduating, so we’re expecting better and better bridges over the next few years. We hope to grow this team larger as well, which should help ensure that we have regular strong finishes for years to come.
The Steel Bridge Team poses with the assembled bridge after the PSWC 2013 competition, in front of Mudd Hall at Pardee Plaza on the USC campus.
Photo © 2013 Lance Hill
PSWC 2013 Rankings & Thanks
Overall, our conference rank for 2013 is 12th, a one-place improvement over last year, out of 18 competing schools. Detailed final scores and rankings information can be found here. But our biggest accomplishment is successfully co-hosting the conference. PSWC 2013 ran extremely smoothly thanks to the tireless work of our E-Board and PSWC planning committee, especially our Conference Co-Chairs Oscar and Theresa. Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we put on an amazing conference, while still faring well in competition!