SSBC 2022 Team Engagement Award: An Open Letter to a New Era
To all who have played a part in building our community over the past year,
UBC Steel Bridge wouldn’t be where we are today without the unique energy everyone has brought - and continues to bring - to the table. Our team is the largest and the most diverse in our history, with over 70 members including a gender-balanced executive team with 8 men, 7 women, and 1 non-binary person. The 2021-22 school year is a year of many “firsts”, and it’s clear that with your help, we are entering a new era of Steel Bridge that puts community learning and growth first.
Looking back on the 2020-21 school year during the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, UBC Steel Bridge witnessed the power of a strong, diverse community. That year, we took leaps of faith with asynchronous workflows (Slack, Discord) all while putting a heavier focus on community social events to stay together in spite of physical barriers. We adapted with the help of feedback from members across different locales and time zones. In spite of it all, our team won 1st place overall in the Canadian National Steel Bridge Competition (CNSBC). Many of you reading this were members during this time, giving way to our lowest turnover rate in recent history - thank you for your continued commitment to our community.
As a team, we learned many lessons from that year, and this is reflected in all aspects of our operations this year. From the start, UBC Steel Bridge expanded recruitment to all faculties, and put an unprecedented emphasis on community-building in our interviewing process. For the first time, we have passionate students sharing their specialized knowledge from other faculties, including commerce and science degree programs. On top of this, all subteams were able to implement accessible, beginner-friendly tutorials in preparation for a more diverse team. This ranged from graphic design learning resource documents in our marketing subteam to truss design videos in our Design and Analysis: Truss (DNAT) subteam.
The benefits of the above are clear in the diverse range of internal processes we have implemented to make valuable information and learning resources more readily accessible. Feedback from previous years showed an issue with “thinking in silos”, as opportunities to interact with members from other subteams was limited. To combat this, we implemented subteam updates for our team-wide general meetings, and organized liaison work between teams. As the year passed by, it was a pleasure to see that we felt safer to express our opinions. This is seen in our bi-monthly accessibility and feedback surveys, which have played a large role in making our implementation of social events and standardized workflows as successful as they have been.
And our commitment to community didn’t stop there, as our Marketing subteam expanded to have members dedicated to take leadership in community-building on both a team-wide and subteam-wide level. Thank you for your participation in our first in-person team-wide social events, from the Icebreaker Event to the Holiday Social. It was a great opportunity to get to know each other beyond design team work, and I was especially amazed by the display of creativity in our pumpkin-carving contest during the Halloween Social. Even with the outbreak of the Omicron variant in December of 2021, we maintained good contact online, and established a thriving community Discord to keep in touch. Our website www.ubcsteelbridge.ca was also recently updated with blog posts, so that people who couldn’t attend don’t have to miss out on the memories we’ve made. And even if people couldn’t attend, our subteam liaisons pilot program has been working behind the scenes to ensure that all subteams have opportunities for social interaction and a safe place to provide feedback.
In each of our subteams, it is clear that a safe, inclusive community has been greatly beneficial to not just our team but our lives in general. We continued the Battle of the Drafters tradition started in 2020-21, which highlighted the talent of our drafting subteam members. For the first time, the Design and Analysis: Truss (DNAT) subteam hosted a successful career advice night within the subteam, with members sharing their experiences. Individuality really shined this year, from connection prototypes seen in our Design and Analysis: Joints (DNAJ) subteam, to Instagram posts designed by each member in our Marketing subteam. It has been a pleasure to witness our team grow and highlight the best parts of each other throughout the year.
No words can describe the honor of having met and worked with your bright minds, and getting to know your stories. It is the final stretch of the year, and with the AISC / ASCE regional Student Steel Bridge Competition coming up soon, I am excited to see the work we’ve put in come together in one well-orchestrated symphony. Regardless of what results may come, please know that we are proud of the work you have put in. Whether you stay with us next year or not, we hope that you take the memories we’ve made and the lessons we’ve learned to every community you encounter.
Warmly,
Halley Suarez
Marketing Executive 2021-22
