First, I was recently notified that John L. Merriam passed away at his home this past February at the age of 95. In addition to being a Fellow grade in ASCE (according to our records, he joined in 1938), Mr. Merriam was recognized as being an internationally known authority on irrigation and water systems who also taught at Cal Poly SLO for 20 years. Many of you may remember his presentation on the topic of agricultural irrigation system design in developing countries at our October 2002 luncheon. During his time at Cal Poly, he was recognized as Outstanding Professor and was honored by having a campus facility named after him, the J. L. Merriam Irrigation Practices Field, a state-of-the-art teaching and research facility. Among his many honors, Mr. Merriam received a Certificate of Appreciation by the California State Department of Water Resources for more than six decades of service to irrigation.

In addition to our local engineering community’s loss of Mr. Merriam, the ASCE national website is highlighting an aspect of the recent Virginia Tech tragedy that largely escaped notice by the mainstream media. Among those killed on that day, Virginia Tech's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the worldwide civil engineering family lost a dedicated and seasoned professor, Dr. G.V. Loganathan, and eight promising young students. According to the website, Dr. Loganathan was a long-time ASCE member who took an active role in the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI), and each of the students was dedicated to engineering, some having traveled across the world to receive a quality education at Virginia Tech. ASCE has developed a special tribute page and condolences book dedicated to Dr. Loganathan and the students which is accessible from the ASCE national home page. Friday, April 27, ASCE National President–Elect David Mongan participated in the memorial service conducted by Virginia Tech's Charles Edward Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) to honor and remember those lost in the tragedy. In his remarks, he said:

“The ASCE community holds the highest regard for the accomplished young people who are no longer with us, taken in the prime of their lives. It is difficult to fathom this tragedy and loss. We can only offer to their families, their friends and the entire Virginia Tech community the solace that they were pursuing the noblest of professions. They were about to dedicate their lives to serving mankind and improving the quality of life for humankind everywhere. We can honor their memory and spirit by doing no less.”

In a common theme this month of honoring memories and looking forward, at the request of the SCE chapter we will also be having an Order of the Engineer Ring Ceremony at this month’s luncheon. According to literature provided by the Program Coordinator at ASCE headquarters, The Order of the Engineer was initiated in the United States “to foster a spirit of pride and responsibility in the engineering profession, to bridge the gap between training and experience, and to present to the public a visible symbol identifying the engineer.” Our Branch sponsored such a ceremony a few years ago which was well received, with numerous participants. Additional information regarding the Order and eligibility for participation is available at the ASCE national website: http://www.asce.org/professional/orderengineer.cfm. If you are interested in participating in the event, please send me an e-mail at jwerst@co.slo.ca.us.

Meet Christopher Alakel - Senior Engineer with Boyle Engineering in San Luis Obispo.

Like many local engineers, he’s a graduate of Cal Poly, and like many others, he spent some time away before returning to the central coast.

Leaving CalPoly with a bachelors in Civil Engineering in 1997, he went to work for Bechtel – and started to travel. Work (groundwater remediation treatment trains, preliminary designs and cost estimates) took Christopher to Germany, Italy, and eventually Albania. While there Christopher was part of his most interesting engineering project - assisting the US Air Force in the construction of “Camp Hope” an Albanian refugee camp for 20,000 people. His efforts focused on the design and construction of water filtration systems used to ensure the safety of drinking water supplies.

Work brought travel, and travel brought his future wife Sigrid. And so traveling brought an end to traveling. Christopher settled down in the Bay area and worked for Silicon Graphics (SGI) as a manufacturing program manager. He remained connected to SGI throughout graduate school where he earned an MBA and an MS in Engineering Management. But the dot-com bust hit just as he finished grad school. Encouraged by a friend, he decided to accept a job offer from Boyle Engineering.

He enjoys his work. “Boyle will allow people as much responsibility as they can handle, but they won’t just ‘dump’ it on you.” He notes that Boyle has a huge pool of resources: “a depth of expertise that an engineer can call on when needed.”

He enjoys mountain biking and rock climbing, and takes advantage of all the local resources for those pursuits. But the BIG NEWS is that he’s a NEW DAD. (Of course Sigrid helped by bringing little Leila into the world, but he was there to take all the pictures.)

For several meetings now, our local branch has been subsidizing the extra cost of these luncheons, which we feel has been a good member benefit. However, since we do not differentiate between members and guests at our luncheons, the benefit is not provided to members only, but to all guests as well. Therefore, we would like to pursue a much better use of the branch funds that will benefit our local branch and/or our local community.

By raising the luncheon fees, we will significantly reduce the amount the branch is subsidizing lunches. This will increase the available branch funds so that we may continue to provide the annual SCE donation of $500 and award the annual student scholarship of $1,500. We’ll be able to continue providing an annual seminar on new technologies or job skills that are of interest to the branch members. In addition, we’ll be able to continue presenting gifts to the volunteer lunch speakers and provide breakfast and refreshments for our Adopt-a-Highway clean-up volunteers. And in the future, to show appreciation for our participating members, the branch officers have goals to add an annual picnic or an evening banquet to our standard repertoire.

In order to ensure that we were in line with other branch lunch fees, we compared our proposed fees with those for San Joaquin ($15/member), Santa Barbara ($20/member), Los Angeles ($30/member), and Orange County ($40/member). Locally, our new lunch fees are comparable to those for the American Public Works Association (APWA) Central Coast Chapter at $20 per member.