by Vanessa Eslava

WRYMC is the Western Regional Younger Member Council and is a two day conference for younger members all across, you guessed it, the western region. This conference started as a business meeting in which delegates from each YMF chapter came together to discuss different resolutions that they wanted to bring to the attention of ASCE's Board of Directors. The event grew and now encompasses numerous networking events and workshops, leadership development opportunities, and technical tours. Though it reads like a standard conference, I assure you, WRYMC is anything but your typical professional event.

I'm glad you are! WRYMC is jam packed with activities; younger members are kept so busy with events and agenda items running from an early breakfast (~7AM) to late at night (~10PM or later). With the variety of programming, there's always something for someone. Even after attending three of these conferences, I've always walked away with a new appreciation for ASCE and felt re-energized to serve this community.

I highly encourage you to ask any of the several people who have attended in the past because we're probably all bound to give you different answers. But since I voluntold myself to write this article, I guess you're hearing my favorites.

Though the conference takes place from Friday to Saturday, the hosting YMF plans pre-conference and post-conference socials taking place on Thursday and Sunday respectively. Both the pre-conference and post-conference tours are a great way to explore the host city, especially if you're a first time visitor. The pre-conference tour is especially valuable because it gives you extra time to meet new friends and start networking early. At this year's WRYMC, there were two choices for the pre-conference tour: the Lanikai Pillbox Hike with some beach time at Lanikai Beach or a day at the Lo'i (Hawaiiwan taro) farm. I attended the Lanikai Pillbox Hike and it was a gorgeous day to be outside. 

That evening, a few of us from the San Diego Chapter (and a new friend from the Las Vegas Chapter!) got dinner together before making our way to the Networking Social. The evening before the conference had three events going on: the Outreach Training Event, a Lu'au, and the Networking Social. Most of our chapter opted for the networking social and again, got a chance to make connections before the first workshop even began. 

I absolutely love this photo because everyone here is from a different chapter and we all met at an ASCE conference. I look forward to seeing these people every year!

The first official day of the conference is filled with workshops from morning to afternoon. The workshops we had were:

• ASCE Geographic Services Presentation. We got to meet and work with our fellow younger members and regional governors by playing a game with them! The game involved answering some general information questions about ASCE and working together to get the right answers. Winners receive a prize, so people definitely came to win.
• Engagement Session with YM and Students. Younger Members and Students worked together to draw a hand using string and a marker and answer the question, "If we were moving humanity to Mars, what should we prioritize?". This session gave us insight on different perspectives and how understanding different points of view can enhance our leadership skills.
• Region Breakouts. Students, younger members, and section professionals sat together to discuss different topics. The topic we spent a lot of time discussing involved the issues that affect our student chapters and how we can address them and how we (younger members and professionals) can support them. It was great to hear from our student leaders.
• Roundtable Sessions. My favorite workshop! In this workshop, each table is given a different topic that represents an aspect of YMF leadership. These include social media and marketing, outreach, board recruitment and retention, fundraising, etc. Participants sit at whatever topic they'd like to discuss. Every table usually ends up being a good mixture of representatives from different chapters and I always walk away learning something new. In this case, I asked the group, "Do you feel like Facebook is getting phased out? If so, what are you doing in lieu of it?" It was nice to know that other chapters felt like Facebook wasn't getting much use, and were transitioning to marketing more heavily on LinkedIn and Instagram. What are YOUR thoughts on this?
• Society Leaders Q&A
• ASCE Geographic Services Department Awards Presentation

These aren't your average workshops! Each workshop is extremely engaging, and you're constantly interacting with the people sitting right next to you. Pro-tip: sit next to people you don't know every opportunity you can! This is super intimidating the first time, but trust me when I say every person at WRYMC is friendly. Every person is a leader of their respective YMF and attends WRYMC with the intention of meeting new people and making new friends. Because of this, it's really easy to make a new connection. Also - trade business cards. Though Facebook and Instagram have made it easy to stay connected with people, I've found that having the actual business card helps me remember what industry my new connections are in -- and it helps with finding everyone's LinkedIn later!

At night on the first day, we had our section dinner. The San Diego Section Professionals, Younger Members, and Students got together at a local restaurant to get to know each other in a more casual setting.

After Section Dinner,  the Younger Members headed over to the Bar Crawl. Every year, the hosting chapter plans a bar crawl for 100+ participants. After a long day of workshops, people are definitely open to the idea of having a good time!

The definition of professionalism: being able to wake up for the 7:30am breakfast after being at the bar crawl. By this definition, you'll realize that all your peers are true professionals. Day two of workshops consists of the following:

• ASCE Joint Breakfast featuring a guest speaker about incorporating the Aloha Culture into our work lives.
• Breakout Sessions. In our break out session, Younger Members got to continue the Aloha conversation by talking about empathy and emotional intelligence. 
  
• Younger Member Business Meetings. WRYMC actually started from this business meeting. Delegates from different chapters recognized a need to meet once a year to discuss items that they wanted to bring to the ASCE Board of Directors' attention. From this sole meeting grew the two day conference that you're reading about now :) This meeting is ran formally using Robert's Rules of Order (which, if you've never been in a space that uses this, it's definitely quite the experience!). Any chapter can bring forth an agenda item or Resolution, and the Younger Members as a whole decide on the appropriate action. This year, the resolutions were: a request for the Board of Directors to provide official guidance on Younger Members transitioning to Section and open access to articles in ASCE Journals. The first resolution stems from a hot topic in the younger member community: the age restriction for younger members. Younger members are typically transitioned into Section members after they turn 35 years old. Though this has been the rule of thumb, there's not official guidance on these restrictions and how to transition members. This resolution is a request for the ASCE Board of Directors to take more of a firm stance on defining a younger member. The second resolution was a request to the Board of Directors to allow older journal articles to be freely accessed, while currently they are accessible for a fee. There is a third resolution, which is one that pops up every year: the location of the next WRYMC. In this agenda item, if a chapter is interested in hosting WRYMC in two years (in this case, 2021), they have to put together a bid (usually a presentation and video) on what makes their chapter the best candidate for hosting. It's a very exciting agenda item because chapters really dedicate a lot of heart and soul into their presentations. 
  
• Technical Tours. There are always a variety of different technical tours that people can attend! The ones we had this year.
  
  • ​Waihe`e Tunnel
    
  • Kunia Country Farms
    
  • Honolulu Rail Transit Project
    
  • Biki​

The banquet wraps up the official days of the conference. The banquet includes awards given to individuals and chapters as well as a lot of food, drinks, and dancing. It's a fantastic way to end the conference and to really hang out with your new connections one last time for this year!

On the Sunday after the banquet, there's a post conference activity. This year, it was a hike. It's my first time attending the post-conference activity and I was pleasantly surprised to have met a lot of people I didn't get to hang out with during the conference. Just goes to show how many attendees there really are!

The location changes every year and younger members get to vote on the new location at the business meeting. With that said, I've found that the location could be anywhere; it's the people that really make the conference what it is. After multiple conferences, I still walk away with amazing memories. Next year, the conference will be in the Bay Area. With its close proximity, it's the perfect time to start planning to attend. Our YMF group can help you get there too! We offer stipends to those who would like to attend (if you're interested, please ask for more details).

Our San Diego chapter plans to help members feel more knowledgeable about opportunities like WRYMC and to encourage more of our members to attend these rewarding events. What can we do to achieve this? Let us know your suggestions!

aloha,

Stephanie Catubig
Website Chair​

Can you believe it? With the ASCE calendar running from October to October, we're at the mid year mark and gearing up to reign in new members to the board. At our March monthly meeting, Alex announced that we'll be taking nominations starting April 8th, with voting taking place April 22nd to May 3rd. 
Before we dive into the positions, let's talk about how you can get involved. Right. Now. 

We currently have TWO committees looking for interested folks to help us serve our YMF community.

Scholarship Selection Committee
​​We recently wrapped up applications for our YMF Scholarship. With many deserving applicants, we need help selecting the final recipients. Please contact Karina ([email protected]) to join the committee and change some lives :)

Social Media Committee
Our social media presence has started the grow over the last few years and we want you to be part of that growth! We're looking for people interested in joining our Social Media Committee. Committee members will collaborate on event flyers, content creation, and marketing for our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, website, and Twitter accounts. No experience is necessary, we're all learning together! Get involved with our committee to have a creative outlet, strategize our marketing efforts, and/or provide valuable content to our fellow members. 

If you're thinking, "I'm ready to sign up!" or "Wait, I have a few questions..." feel free to email [email protected] to start the conversation.

Instead of providing the standard job descriptions, we decided it'd be fun to share why a few of us love our positions.

​Mikey on being Membership Chair:
If you’re going to be a part of something, you should make it better. 

Tan on being Treasurer:
Money is necessary and proper book keeping is important, of course, but it also helps to empower individual ideas and make them real (and I enjoy encouraging that).

Kailene on being Social Chair:
I love meeting new people and making connections through common interests. Being social chair allows me to plan events where making these connections is promoted and gives me the creativity to plan new activities around our beautiful city! Whether it’s trying a new local brewery for happy hour or a weekend ski trip, I’m able to see new faces with each event and make lasting connections. 

Chase on being Social Chair:
I like my position because it allows me to plan events where I can get the chance to meet fellow YMF’ers outside of any business oriented or professional setting. 

Pedro on being PE Review Chair:
I love being a PE Review Chair because you get to give back to the industry by helping others prepare for their license exams. Its also really cool meeting others in the professional industry, who maybe just like you, are also working to obtain a professional engineering license in civil engineering. 

Stephanie on being Website Chair:
I love that being website chair means I get to be creative and find new ways to engage our members. I've enjoyed getting the opportunity to share our YMF experience and memories with our community and hopefully encourage potential new members to come check out our events.

Alex on being President-Elect:
​I enjoy trying to come up with meeting topics that our members will find interesting.

Karina on Scholarship Chair:
The Scholarship Chair position is a great way to give back to our engineering students. It’s fun coordinating with the other organizations and outreaching to professors and student chapters to help market our efforts to help them. You meet a lot of great people along the way.

Vanessa in Secretary:
I enjoy being Secretary because it is a great position to find out about all the events that is going on within YMF.

Catherine on Newsletter:
The newsletter position allows me to connect with everyone and promote their accomplishments throughout the year!

​Curious for more? Click here for the official position descriptions. 

Please send an email listing the position(s) in which you are interested to Alex Ford ([email protected]). Voting will begin following the nomination period and will close on Friday, May 3rd.

We hope that you consider becoming a part of the board!

Stephanie Catubig
Website Chair

​On September 18th, we had our very first meeting of the 2018-2019 year and my last event as Social Co-Chair for the 2017-2018 year. In keeping with tradition, our first event of the new year is a happy hour instead of our regular meeting that features a speaker. We held the event at Soda & Swine in Liberty Station where all 40 of us took over the back patio to chat with friendly, familiar faces.

Our first meeting of the year is always a wonderful way to kick off the new year. Whether it's a member's first meeting or hundredth meeting, the casual setting allows for the happy serendipity of running into old friends and meeting new ones. Regardless of a member's number of years with ASCE, the first meeting's energy always reminds us of our first meeting and the eagerness to make new connections within the industry. 

As we filled the back patio and took our seats to eat, I couldn't help but feel happy that not only was this the last event I'm *officially* in charge of, but also that I was surrounded by both familiar and not so familiar faces. I'm happy to say that we had a great turn out of both returning members and first timers.  

Do you remember you first meeting? Writing this post made me reflect on things I wish I knew on how to make the most out of YMF. So I collected a few tips from fellow board members and consolidated our thoughts into a few main takeaways:

Tips on How to Make the Most of YMF:

1. Go to meetings/events. This may sound like the obvious one, but it really does start here. See what we have to offer! We have a lot of different events that we hope will speak to one of your interests: monthly meetings with unique topics, tech tours, social events, and outreach/volunteer events.  
2. Meet new people. The beginning of every general meeting is dedicated networking time. We give all members the opportunity to jump into a casual environment before we jump to the speaker's topic. We hope every members gets to make a new connection and expand their network. And because we are a professional organization, it's always nice to exchange business cards and/or connect on LinkedIn. Sometimes I'm still surprised at how many times I hear, "I'm on that project too!" 
3. Get involved and participate. After a few meetings and some social events, my personal interest in YMF started to grow. There were events I wanted to suggest, there were ways I wanted to improve the newsletter/website, there were ideas on ideas. Most of these ideas were teeny tiny ("It would be cool if..") and a few were enough to fire me up ("I REALLY think we NEED to do..."). But ideas are ideas and even with a board of over 10 people, we're not going to be able to come up with all the good ones. We want to hear from you. Did you think this event? Did you think there's a topic we should discuss as a chapter? Got a cool social event idea? Is there a committee or position you're interested in? Drop us an email or find any board member (we've got red name tags!) and let us know.  Say yes to investing yourself in this organization, you will make a difference!
4. Give back. We have volunteer events that benefit the community and our student chapters. Let's give back to the communities we live, work, and learned in!

We also had our first board meeting. On Oct 2nd, new and returning board members met at TY Lin to get right to business on the new year. I was not present at this year's board retreat*, so I valued being able to meet the new board members for the first time. Everyone is truly excited to kick off the year and I am excited to see what we bring to the table. But I won't spoil too much... Surprises are always fun :) Do you have anything you hope to see this year? Let us know! We love hearing from you.

See you at our next meeting!
Stephanie Catubig, Website Chair

*Every year, a board retreat is held right before the start of the new ASCE year. Current and incoming officers are invited and we spend a weekend working on the upcoming year, bonding, and reviewing the previous year. We spend a lot of time discussing our successes and shortcomings, analyzing constituent needs and interests, and setting goals to better provide for our members. Our discussion is based largely on our experiences and the results of the End of the Year Survey. We hope that every member knows we love hearing from you! Whether it be the End of the Year Survey or with feedback along the year, we value your opinion.

​We are pleased to present the 2017 ASCE San Diego YMF Winter Newsletter:

Location: Sufi Mediterranean
Presenter: Peter Smith, Bridge Engineer, from T.Y. Lin International
Summary: Caltrans, in partnership with the City of San Diego, completed the seismic retrofit and rehabilitation of the Laurel Street Overcrossing in 2014. This National Historic Landmark, also known as the Cabrillo Bridge, was constructed in 1914 for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915. The bridge crosses the SR 163 Freeway and provides the only access for pedestrians and vehicles into the heart of Balboa Park from the west over Cabrillo Canyon. The bridge was identified for seismic retrofitting and needed rehabilitation to repair corrosion and to improve accessibility for maintenance inspection. Retrofit and rehabilitation work started in 2013 and was completed in time for the 2015 Centennial Celebration of the park.