PROVO, Utah – Engineering students from the University of Alabama in Huntsville designed and built the canoe voted “most innovative” in the 37th annual American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe Competition.

The final phase of the event was staged as part of last month’s ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

UAH finished 17th overall and received the Innovation Award for developing a mold removal design. To advance to the finals, the UAH team placed first in March over 13 universities in the ASCE Gulf Coast Student Symposium in New Orleans.

“The mold used to cast the concrete is usually ruined in the process of making the canoe,” said team faculty advisor Dr. Michael Anderson, chair of the UAH Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and associate dean for Graduate Education & Research. “This year there was emphasis on sustainability, and the UAH team design allowed for the mold to be removed, without damage, to support the option to make multiple canoes using the same mold.”

The ASCE Concrete Canoe event is the society’s flagship student competition. Teams spend months leading up to the event by crafting a canoe made entirely out of concrete that is capable of floating and racing against dozens of other competitors.

This year’s competition featured nearly 300 civil engineering students from 13 universities in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi who honed their project management skills in a series of challenges. The ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships are made possible with funding from the ASCE Foundation.

“The UAH team, consisting of students in civil engineering, along with other engineering majors, designed, built and raced a concrete canoe on the Bayou St. John,” Anderson said. “The team finished in first place in the overall competition at the symposium, defeating  teams from Auburn, Mississippi State, Louisiana State and Louisiana Tech, among others.”