January 2017 President's Report

It’s a new year! BSCES has a great program lined up for the first half of the year so that you can fulfill your New Year’s resolution to be more engaged in BSCES.

I am excited to report that BSCES continues to set the bar high within ASCE! BSCES was recently awarded the 2016 Outstanding Section and Branch Award for very large Sections and Branches. BSCES Vice President and Award Committee Chair Christopher (Topher) Smith, HNTB Corporation, worked hard at developing the submittal for this award which detailed the many technical group, institute chapter and committee activities and the achievements of our members. 

This award was presented at the 2017 Regions 1, 2, 4, and 5 Multi-Region Leadership Conference on Saturday, January 21. Alyson Stuer (Younger Member Group), Malek Al-Khatib (President-Elect) and Rich Maher (Senior Vice President) attended the Conference in Newark, New Jersey. BSCES has achieved this award six out of the last seven years! Congratulations to our Section and a thank you Topher.

Among the many reasons that BSCES is able to achieve this great award year after year is due in part from donations received over the years that created “special funds” for our Section. BSCES has twenty special funds, which allow the technical groups and institute chapters to finance specific events, provide scholarships, grants, awards and other activities that support the mission of BSCES.

I would like to highlight a few of the special funds that are mentioned in this newsletter. First, the Arthur Casagrande Fund was established in 1983 in memory of Arthur Casagrande who made or contributed to making the fundamental developments of Soil Mechanics and later became a Professor of Soil Mechanics. The fund was started with a $5,000 from the Geotechnical Group Lecture Series Reserve Fund and was later funded from contributions from various Boston engineering firms. The fund was established to be used to support a lecture given every other year by an eminent engineer with longstanding achievements in practice, teaching, and/or research in geotechnical engineering. This year the lecture will be held on February 2nd and will feature Suzanne Lacasse, ScD of the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute who will present on the Hazard, Risk and Reliability in Geotechnical Practice. For more information, please see the event notice in this newsletter.

Second, the Joseph C. Lawler Engineering Management Lecture Fund was established in March 1986 in memory of ASCE Civil Engineering Management Award winner Joseph C. Lawler, former president and CEO of CDM Smith Inc., to provide a forum to discuss important aspects of engineering management. These include the management of projects, the general management of engineering organizations, and the management of engineering education and professional development. This year’s Lawler Lecture will occur in June 2017 and will include two speakers, Rick Dimino, president and CEO of A Better City, as well as Barry Bluestone, senior research associate for the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy and key contributor to A Better City’s State of the Built Environment report.

For all of the students reading this newsletter that are enrolled in an environmental engineering program, I would like to highlight the opportunity to apply for the 2017 Jonathan B. Golden Scholarship, which is offered through the Environmental & Water Resources Institute Boston Chapter. The Jonathan B. Golden Scholarship Fund was established by BSCES in 2002 in memory of Jon Golden, former Boston office manager for MWH Global, and to recognize his many contributions to the environmental engineering profession, particularly his genuine commitment to the mentoring and training of young engineers. The scholarship award amount is $5,000. Please refer to page 7 and the insert included at the end of this newsletter for the full details on how to apply before April 4th. 

Also, the Transportation & Development Institute Boston Chapter is seeking nominations for the 2017 Bertram Berger Young Engineer Award, which recognizes an outstanding BSCES younger member for his or her professional achievements and service to the community. This $2,500 award is made possible from the proceeds of the Bertram Berger Memorial Fund, which was established in 1982 by the BSCES Board of Government in recognition of former Fay Spofford & Thorndike vice president Bertram Berger's contributions to ASCE and to BSCES. Nominations for this award are due by April 14th. Please refer to page 7 and the insert included at the end of this newsletter for additional details. 

The featured group of this month’s newsletter is the BSCES Engineering Management Group and I urge you learn more about this group, which is chaired by Michaela Bogosh of CDM Smith Inc. This issue of BSCESNews contains a page 6 article that was written by Michaela.

In closing, I would like to thank all of our Society and Program Sponsors, whose financial support helps enable BSCES and its committees, institute chapter and technical groups to host the numerous networking and professional development events that are planned for this year.