Dear friends of UMass Amherst ASCE,

Through our MinuteFund campaign, we were able to raise $4,314.  Wow!  This money goes a long way toward supporting our student design teams and our community service opportunities.  Here’s a few ways your donation will have an impact:

1. This afternoon at 4:25pm, six members of our Seismic Design team will be on an airplane bound for a direct flight to San Francisco, California.  In a field which gets more competitive each year, their design proposal ranked in the Top 9 overall, and it looks great!  Check out our album of images and visit http://slc.eeri.org/SDC2016.htm to learn more about the Seismic Design competition.
2. Our Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge teams were both in rebuilding years and have made significant strides in improving workflow and information management.  Designs and Gantt charts from previous years have been compiled and schedules for next fall are being outlined.  The Canoe team has also purchased a portable cement mixer for approximately $300, an essential piece of equipment which has been rented for at least the previous 2 years at $50-100 per day.  This will allow the team to test a greater number of mixtures without having to worry about rental costs.
3. On the weekend of April 22nd-24th, a number of students interested in being leaders on next fall’s design teams will attend the 2016 Regional Conference in Boston.  This is an important opportunity for the students to see the format of the competitions and plan for the success of next year’s teams.
4. On Saturday, April 23rd, back in Amherst, 6-10 students will volunteer with Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity.  UMass Amherst ASCE is sponsoring the event and will provide the wood, nails, and other materials necessary for all the framing that can be done on this Team Build Day. 

Your donation goes toward supporting all these students and more through UMass Amherst ASCE, and we thank you for that support.  We are proud to be able to offer students a range of opportunities to apply knowledge they learn in classrooms to real design and community service projects.  We are also excited by the steps of improvement we have already made and those we will continue to make, thanks to your support.

We invite you to continue to follow our progress by Liking our Facebook page at fb.com/UMassAmherstASCE and bookmarking our website at blogs.umass.edu/ASCESC.  Also, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have or to find out how you can get involved!  You can reach Dan Clasby, Chapter President, at dclasby@umass.edu.

Thank you, again, and happy day!

UMass Amherst ASCE Fundraising Committee

Hello again!

We are very pleased to have raised the money we have so far, but with less than two weeks remaining and a ways before our goal, we reached out to alumni for support and have been given an exciting opportunity.

Starting at noon today (3/16) and lasting until noon tomorrow, an anonymous donor has agreed to match all donations $100 or less, up to $1000.  This is an opportunity to double the impact of your donation!  If you have already donated, please feel free to share our page through email or social media using the buttons on the MinuteFund page. 

Here are two places where your generosity will go:

Our Seismic Design team has been working hard (almost constantly) the last few weeks assembling the balsa wood tower they need to ship to San Francisco in the first week of April.  Your support of UMass Amherst ASCE helps to offset the travel expenses for our student members and the shipping costs of the tower.  This year, we are excited to be sending six undergraduates to the EERI Annual Meeting and Seismic Design Competition.  You can find pictures of the Seismic Design team by visiting the photo album here.

Our Concrete Canoe team faced an unfortunate setback last weekend.  After designing and testing a set of experimental cylinders to find the optimal range of admixtures, and approximating the effect of scaling-up on uniformity, the team attempted to make the mix for the canoe.  Due to the improved mixing of rented professional equipment, activated admixtures affected the mix design exponentially greater than anticipated.  The team spent hours and used all the tools and materials at their disposal to try to correct the situation, but was forced to retire without having been able to set concrete on their hull design. 

Through the generous support of our MinuteFund, we hope to purchase equipment like a portable cement mixer so that our design teams will not have to worry about the quality of the equipment they use.

Thank you again for your support and please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have!

Sincerely,

Dan Clasby, President of UMass Amherst ASCE

Links:  MinuteFund | Official Chapter Website | Chapter Facebook Page

Hi all!

Thank you for donating to UMass Amherst ASCE!  We have a couple announcements after this first week of our MinuteFund campaign.

Firstly, we are happy to announce we reached 20% of our goal in the first week!  We are excited to be at this point and are grateful to everyone who has donated.  Please continue to share our page and send us pictures of your experiences with UMass Amherst ASCE, if you are a former member.

Second, we regret to announce that our Steel Bridge design team has decided they are unable to compete in this year's competition do to a small team size and delay in receiving resources.  From Hal Thompson, Steel Bridge captain:

"Alex Kiriakidis and I met with (Steel Bridge Faculty Advisor) Dr. Civjan and determined that we had not made enough progress to be able to compete this year. The team was relatively short handed for the entire year and one key member dropped out recently which made the design difficult for the two of us to handle. "

We will be using some of the funds in our budget set aside for the Steel Bridge competition to participate in a Habitat for Humanity Team Build Day in April and save the rest for a stronger start next year. 

We also have good news from our Seismic Design team!  From co-captain Tracy Donoghue:

"The UMass Amherst Seismic Design team is continually making progress with our balsa wood tower fabrication! Our SAP2000 building model, designed to withstand the three earthquakes it will be subjected to at the competition, has been finalized. All of the 26 floors of the tower have been individually completed, and vertical construction will start soon. We gave a presentation on the project to Jim Malley, a Senior Principal with Degenkolb Engineers visiting from San Francisco. There's a lot left to do before the competition but our spirits are high and we are on track to finish on time!"

See the video below, prepared by VP and Seismic Design team member Zach Bartula, to see more of what the Seismic Team has been up to.  Also, the Concrete Canoe design team has been doing exceptionally well and should have an update next week.  Thank you, again, for supporting our chapter this spring; we couldn't do it without you!

Sincerely,

Dan Clasby, President of UMass Amherst ASCE