Student Organizations

ITE UF Student Chapter WTS Florida Gator Student Chapter WTS Transportation Symposium

This past year, the ITE UF student chapter participated in various transportation-related competitions, hosted technical and education seminars, inviting engineers across the state, and worked with K-12 students to teach them about transportation engineering. The student chapter was the winner of the ITE District competition in early summer 2013, qualifying them to compete in the International Traffic Bowl. Members of the 2013 team were,Thomas Chase, Miguel Lugo, Ben Reibach and Don Watson. UF competed in the 2013 International Traffic Bowl Grand Championship, which was held at the ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Boston, Mass., against several other colleges from around the world winning first place and $2000 for the student chapter.

The student chapter is home to female and male graduate and undergraduate students, and its main goal is to recruit and retain female students in transportation engineering. A major accomplishment for the chapter this year was its official ratification by WTS International, making it an officially recognized chapter. Chapter members hosted and participated in several events including the annual WTS Transportation Symposium, the fourth cleanup of a street they adopted in Gainesville, Fla., in spring 2012 through the City of Gainesville’s Adopt-A-Street Program, and participation in Transportation YOU activities such as volunteering at the engineering table at the P.K. Yonge Carnival and the Fall Transportation Career Day. The student chapter also participated in an education fair at Monteocha New Life Church, in a northern rural area of Gainesville and they hosted a workshop featuring Marsha Anderson-Bomar of Stantec titled “The Language of Leadership.” During the spring 2014 semester, through the financial support of Stantec, the student chapter was able to purchase polo shirts for the executive board for the first time. The student chapter also attended the 2014 University Transportation Center (UTC) Conference for the Southeastern Region, which was hosted by Georgia Tech in March and held in Atlanta, Ga.

The WTS student chapter at the University of Florida hosted their annual signature event, the WTS Transportation Symposium, on November 12, 2013 at the Arredondo Room located in the Reitz Union on the UF campus. The topic of the 2013 symposium was “Communication between Women and Men in the Workplace”. The panelists were: Jamie Breme of Fluor, an engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance (EPCM), and project management company; Jessica Grant of the Florida Department of Transportation which has the responsibility of coordinating, planning and developing the multimodal transportation system in the state of Florida, one of the nation’s premier transportation companies; Dr. Angela Lindner, UF, associate dean for undergraduate student affairs; and Dan Plonk, director of transportation planning at Norfolk Southern.