September 2022 President's Report

I hope everyone found some time to enjoy the summer with friends and family. This is the first issue of BSCESNews for the 174th year of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section (BSCES) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Since 1848, BSCES has been a thriving professional society dedicated to helping its members and the local community. Throughout its history, members of our organization have worked to improve the daily lives of people in our community by helping to provide clean water, sanitation, safe bridges, buildings, roads, and more. From the Quabbin Reservoir to the Zakim Bridge the impact of our members can be seen across the Commonwealth. I am honored to have been elected by the membership to serve during the coming year and help to support this organization’s proud legacy.

I would like to first off thank BSCES Past-President Shallan Fitzgerald for her leadership this past fiscal year as we all struggled to cope with the continued impact of COVID-19 on our lives. She did a tremendous job balancing the health and safety of our members and the public while working to ensure BSCES continued to provide the high-quality professional development activities and events our members rely on us for. It was great to see her hosting live and in-person at our Annual Awards Dinner in June! Thanks again, Shallan for all your hard work!

Our new fiscal year began July 1, 2023, and our volunteers have already been working on developing events for the coming year. We are planning to continue our tradition of hosting over 40 events and activities for our members. This will include technical programs and networking opportunities as well as the presentation of awards and scholarships to deserving recipients.

My goal as president this year is to help BSCES continue to thrive and grow so that it will be able to serve its members and community for the next 174 years. To that end, I will be working with our diligent volunteer leadership and The Engineering Center Education Trust (TECET) on the following objectives:

• Revising our event planning process to help us provide high quality, repeatable, and relevant professional development content and networking opportunities to our members. It will also help us to generate profitable and sustainable revenue to help support BSCES’s overall mission and financial stability. We hope to achieve these objectives by centralizing the BSCES event planning process through an expanded Program Committee. This committee will include all institute chapter and technical group chairs. 
• Returning to live events. I believe it is important that we help transition our events from virtual to live programs wherever feasible. Live events provide a more enriching learning environment and networking/social connections that cannot be matched by on-line programs.
• Developing the capacity to host hybrid events (live and on-line). The pandemic showed that virtual events and online access to live programs will make them more accessible and increase participation.
• Continuing to work on our organization’s financial management process to ensure that our organization can continue to thrive for another 174 years.
• Supporting the Membership Committee’s efforts to maintain and grow our membership. 
• Supporting the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee as it seeks to develop the criteria and process for awarding Peter S. Eagleson Scholarships . This important new scholarship is focused on providing financial aid to civil engineering students from communities that are underrepresented within the civil engineering profession.

This issue of the newsletter is focused on transportation and features an article from the chair of our ASCE Transportation & Development Institute Boston Chapter, Annahid Dastgheib-Beheshti, PE, from Arup. There are also a number of great articles in this issue on the work our members are doing in transportation. I have biked in Boston for many years and I found myself nodding in agreement to the issues raised in Alfredo Vargas’ article about commuting to work on a bike. I have witnessed the tremendous growth in bike infrastructure in Boston but it still is not enough if we want to encourage people to ride and keep them safe.

Finally, I want to thank our many volunteers and sponsors who make the work of this organization possible. Thank you!