PNW Civil Engineering students repeat as national champions at surveying competition

Purdue Northwest Civil Engineering student Krish Zalavadia uses a theodolite during the UESI Surveying national competition at Brigham Young University.

Purdue University Northwest (PNW) Civil Engineering students emerged victorious as national champions for a second consecutive year at the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute (UESI) Surveying collegiate competition.

Fourth-year students Natalia Briggs and Quinton Pender and third-year students Dylan Barthel and Krish Zalavadia earned the first-place finish for PNW’s ASCE chapter at the 2024 ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships, hosted at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Briggs, Pender, and Zalavadia took the top prize in 2023 at University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

Student teams competing in the UESI Surveying competition apply civil engineering principles with field equipment to complete several tasks, simulating a real-world professional scenario.
PNW’s surveying team competed alongside 15 other qualifying teams, beating out Clemson University (second place) and Penn State University (third place).

“It is very exciting, and I am very humbled that we were able to maintain our title as No. 1,” said Pender. “We met weekly for months in advance to practice as much as possible. The competition this year was fierce, and the field task difficulty was definitely up a notch. But it was nothing we could not handle and work through together.”

“I am pleased to see our surveying team win the ASCE surveying competition at the national level,” said Wubeshet Woldemariam, associate professor of Civil Engineering. “This achievement is a result of hard work and dedication by the team members to win the competition, as they did in the past.”

PNW’s ASCE team’s travel was supported through generous sponsors, including the ASCE Northwest Indiana Section; DLZ consulting firm; Indiana Society of Professional Land Surveyors Northwest Chapter; and Torrenga Surveying, LLC.

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Purdue Northwest Civil Engineering students, from left, Dylan Barthel, Natalia Briggs, Quinton Pender and Krish Zalavadia, pose together with their first-place trophies from the ASCE UESI Surveying national competition.