YCGL - February 1-8, 2023 - WESSSSSSS
Yikes! That's a big picture!
What can I say about WESS?
The Wyoming Engineering and Surveying Society is, to anyone's knowledge, the only organization in the country in which engineers and surveyors get together for education and relaxation. It is so unique that several national organizations have it on their calendars to send officers (usually their presidents) to this meeting in someplace Wyoming. Societies like the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Society of Professional Surveyors, the American Council of Engineering Consultants, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and so on. Its pretty incredible that so many national leaders come to this three day meeting.
What is so unique about WES/WESS?
[About the WES/WESS thing. The society has been known as the Wyoming Engineering Society (WES) for over 100 years (1918-present). Last year (2022), to show our support of the surveyors who have been full members and officers in the society during its entire existence, we changed the name to reflect that association to the Wyoming Engineering and Surveying Society (WESS).]
Foreshadowing. I'm going to talk about my favorite organization for a (long) while. You can skip down to the black line if you don't want to wade through it.
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I attended my first WES in 1985 in Sheridan, WY and it was incredible. At that time, I was an untenured professor. I had taught the first Engineering Professional Development course offered by the College of Engineering to a group from the Wyoming Association of Consulting Engineers and Surveyors (WACES) in the fall of 1983. WACES was the Wyoming member of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC). It is an organization dealing with the business of consulting engineering. I met a lot of the leaders in the state through that workshop (including a similarly aged Civil Engineer named Joe Lord.) When I got to that first WES, I already knew various engineers from across the state. I got introduced around and met people who's names I had already heard of, and their wives. The Spouse Program was very active then, and it was all wives, no men. And, since many (most) of the members were graduates from the University of Wyoming College of Engineering, it was also an alumni association. It was a chance to see classmates (and professors) that you many not have seen since last year.
The convention was a three-legged stool, with education, exhibits and hospitality. The convention was three days long, the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday of February. There was a general opening session with the entire membership, and then break into the presentations. There were lunches on those three days and banquets on Thursday and Friday nights. The Thursday dinner was more casual, the Friday Banquet was formal, people dressed to the nines and dancing to a live band.
Education had three concurrent tracks of presentations, Civil Engineering, Surveying and Other Engineering. Other Engineering included presentation from Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and in business related topics. You could hop back and forth between tracks if you saw something interesting.
The Exhibits would be in a ballroom. Venders of surveying equipment, pipe manufacturers, concrete products, engineering software (in 1985, there were just being developed), office supplies, you name it, would purchase a table or two or three to show their wares. There would be 40-50 different venders. And venders wanted you to remember them, so they would have various bling to pick up, note pads, pens, pencils, clips, candy, and, of course, product brochures. And bags, to put all the stuff in. You could walk away with pounds of materials. And, the vendors are all talkers, so you would get "the stories" from them also.
And then, there was Hospitality. In addition to the lunches and banquets, there were the vendor events. At 4:00 on Thursday, all the vendors would pool together and have the Exhibitor's Beer Break. When you visited the vendor's table, you would fill out a card and put it in a container for a drawing. They would have equipment, gadgets, HP calculators that you could win. (One year, I won a 4 foot long construction level and four, collapsible orange highway cones. People kept asking what was a professor going to do with those. Well, when we remodeled the house, my contractor used my level because it was more accurate than his. I used the highway cones on my last research project for redirecting traffic while my grad student and I took surveying measurement on the highway. I now keep them in the travel trailer. You never know when they will become useful. And Mary O' borrows them for a PEO project. They get used. :)) But, the big thing was the beer. There would be one or two kegs, and all these engineers and surveyors would revert back to college days and get wild and crazy. At least, crazy enough to be happy to attend the banquet later...)
But, it was after the banquets that the fun really began. The larger vendors would rent a room (or a suite) with a bar and hors d'eourves, i.e., lots of BBQ sausages, wings, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, chips and dips, nothing fancy, generally hardy fare. The beds would be removed from the rooms and tables set up. Then there would be cards or dice games that would go on late into the night (and sometimes to the morning!) It was often fun to watch senior company officers dosing off during the lectures. (Never me, of course.....well...maybe......Hot room, monotone lecture, ok, sometimes it happened For some reason, former students would get a kick out of that.)
Finally, there was the "business meeting." It was the last thing before the final banquet. When you read the agenda, it looks like most business meetings, except not quite.
But probably the best thing that the organization does is the scholarship fund. Back in 1985, to scholarship fund was becoming formalized. At that time, the fund was about $75,000 and the awards were in the $500-$1000 range. Eventually, there were two branches, the Scholarship fund, which the students can apply for, and the Student Engineer of the Year, where each department in the college selects its best student based on GPA and activities and goals. Just being the highest GPA in the department didn't guarantee selection. I was normally on the Civil and Architectural scholarship committee over the years and often it would be third, fourth or fifth student who had the more significant inside and outside activities. Nowadays, we give out $30,000+ for our students. Obviously, fund raising for the scholarship fund is an important part of the convention.
SSOOO.....All of this was like attending a carnival, or Disneyland. Something was always going on, there were always people to talk to. And frankly, as a young professor back then, people wanted to talk to me. (I counseled a lot of concerned parents that their kids would be ok after all.) I often said to myself, "Please don't throw me into that briar patch."
Now, back to 1985. There are three things that I remember about that convention.
First, when I walked into the final, formal banquet, I looked around the room and it occurred to me that probably 75% of all the engineering done in the state of Wyoming up to that time was sitting in that room. And most of them were UWyo graduates.
Second, when one of the past presidents got to their hotel room on Wednesday afternoon, he and his wife found a black, women's one-piece bathing suit in the dresser that someone had left by accident. (At least, that was Livy's story.) At the banquet, he showed the bathing suit and asked for donations to the scholarship fund if he would wear it swimming. He got a bunch of money and true to his word, he did a cannonball into the hotel pool (which was indoors, it was February), black swimming suit, his cowboy boots and all. Pretty impressive for an engineering firm owner!
Third, was also related to the scholarship fund. At that point, the criteria for receiving the money had not been firmly established. There were two camps on the committee setting up the scholarship, one was for a general scholarship for which any student could apply and the other was for the best student from the department, a precursor to the system that we use now. But that hadn't been worked out at that point. So, after the banquet, two of the committee members, one a firm owner from Jackson Hole and the other a former State Engineer, got into a fist fight over how to spend the money.
At that point, I realized that this was an organization that I had to be a member of. When you could get some of the most respected members of the engineering community in Wyoming to have the passion to do crazy stunts and get into fist fights for students, something was going to be alright. And its a history like that which brings the national organization leaders to a small convention in a small state in February.
Someday, I'll write about the Past President's Breakfast, the ASCE Workshops and the Edgar Lecture Series.
Interesting Factoid - The Wyoming Engineering Society was started in 1918 and the first convention was in 1919 in Cheyenne. The first president was Frank C. Emerson from Worland, WY. He was the State Engineer from 1919 to 1926 and became governor in 1927.He defeated Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first female governor in the United States. He was the second governor to die in office (in 1931 of pneumonia, age 48), the first being William Ross, who's wife, Nellie Tayloe Ross, succeeded him.
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I wrote about the difficulties I had driving up to Casper. Luckily, each day got a little warmer and WYDOT had done a good job of cleaning (most) of the highway. Driving home Friday afternoon went much smoother than on Wednesday, and even with the wind and snow blowing across the road, the snow had not built up , except one 22 mile stretch, from where highway 77 breaks off from highway 487 to Medicine Bow. This is where a lot of the Wyoming Wind Corridor crosses the highway. There are two large wind farms in this stretch. And the snow can build up. But, luck would have me following a Suburban over that entire length and we got through fine.
(A little about the Wyoming traffic on this highway. It is 150 miles from Laramie to Casper. Casper is the 2nd largest city in the state and Laramie is the third largest. As I was heading south to Laramie, I doubt if more than 40 vehicles passed me heading north. I have carefully counted several times and my lowest number is six vehicles driving passed me over that 150 mile stretch. Once you are off the Interstates, it can get lonely out there.)
Sunday, I was the Lector at church. Since I was vote Most Cute in Denver last week, I decided I would wear my same outfit.
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