In an effort to attract more students to the civil engineering profession and to provide additional workforce development opportunities for state department of transportation employees, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials signed a partner agreement with the American Society of Civil Engineers at the 2019 AASHTO annual meeting in St. Louis.

[Above photo by Cathy Morrison/MoDOT.]

Longtime friends Kancheepuram “Guna” Gunalan (seen at left in photo above), ASCE’s 2019 president, and Carlos Braceras (at right) – executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation and AASHTO’s 2018-2019 president – held a formal signing ceremony at AASHTO’s annual meeting to cement the partnership, which will also provide state DOTs with discounted rates on ASCE memberships and products.

Once a state DOT’s ASCE roster reaches 35 memberships, the full suite of partner benefits will be accessible, ASCE’s Gunalan noted during a presentation at AASHTO’s annual meeting.

He also emphasized that ASCE can help state DOTs recruit more engineers into their workforce as well.

“The children today are the next generation of our workforce, but that workforce will not be the same and the tools and technology will be very different,” he said in his remarks at the meeting. “We can help through our new AASHTO partnership with workforce development – especially with outreach to schoolkids.”