May 2021 President’s Report

I had started to draft this President’s Report as a pessimistic look into the unknown future of BSCES as a professional society.  Here’s the bad news in short.  Virtual events are attracting fewer registrants than expected and we’re finding it increasingly difficult to find member volunteers to support our important undertakings.  This is not necessarily news and not likely to get somebody off the couch to lend a hand.  I’m going to save that piece for another day or possibly for some future BSCES president.  Given that I just came from watching a little league game on a sunny day without a mask, I’ve decided to pivot and write the glass half-full presentation of BSCES and its future. 

Glass half-full.  Despite being an old-lady of 173 years, BSCES is still agile enough to adopt new technologies and experiment with new ways of making BSCES more relevant to its members.  Let’s celebrate our recent accomplishments.  We’ve successfully transitioned from a state where online events were an occasional and exceptional occurrence to one where they just part of how we do business.  In the process we’ve enabled members to participate in our programs with a minimum of disruption to their days and reduced the greenhouse gas contributions of driving to events.  Our Professional Engineer Refresher Course is offered online and based on what we are hearing from both teachers and students, will likely continue to operate that way in a post-COVID world.  We’ve pulled off a successful reboot of the BSCES journal and expect to see the second issue this summer.  Our member newsletter is more accessible with the new HTML-formatted BSCESNews and we continue to fill the newsletter with the valuable content about our organization and the civil engineering profession.  We’ve begun discussion to improve the Legislative Fellow program.  Lastly, BSCES has created a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee that promises to address uncomfortable discussions about our profession and its role in the world.  

The aforementioned is all great news.  Does that mean that BSCES will be around another 173 years or even 17 years from now?  No.  The future of the organization depends on some combination of good intentions, foresight, and hard work.  Given our history, I wouldn’t bet against us.

News from ASCE President Elect.  Every year, BSCES runs a leadership event attended by representatives from our Society Sponsors, BSCES leaders, and past presidents.  As a matter of tradition, the ASCE president-elect is invited to speak on what’s going on with ASCE and their plans for the coming year.  This year, the president-elect is Dennis Truax from the Mississippi State University Department of Civil Engineering.  President-Elect Truax described his plans to reach out beyond the world of consulting to recruit members from academia, government, and industry.  He is also keenly aware of the importance of attracting and retaining student and young members to the long-term health of ASCE.  Hopefully, his career as an academic will provide special insight into the challenge of engaging a new generation of engineers and yield success on this front.  I applaud him for both of these initiatives and wish him well.  

President-Elect Truax concluded his remarks with a clarification of the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which is often attributed to Charles Darwin.  Truth is that this was not an expression used by Darwin.  It would be more accurate to say that Darwin spoke of the importance of a species’ flexibility in determination of its success.  I’ll reduce that to “adapt or die,” which we at BSCES should take to heart as well.  Constant reinvention in these turbulent times is an essential skill.

Congratulations to our newest BSCES Honorary Members.  I extend my congratulations to James Lambrechts, PE and Christine Keville, who have been awarded BSCES Honorary Membership status.  Jim has had successful careers in industry and in academia, and has been a good friend to BSCES over many years.  Christine Keville, founder and leader of Keville Enterprises is a philanthropist and has assumed lead roles in many trade groups.  Please join us for the 172nd BSCES Annual Awards Celebration, which is being held virtually on June 17, to honor these two esteemed friends of the civil engineering community.

In closing, I would like to recognize and thank AECOM a 2020-2021 BSCES Society Sponsor and the sponsor of this issue of BSCESNews.  Please be sure to read their article entitled “Successful program management requires an integrated approach ” which was written by Colm Tully and Derval Cummins.