Keenan Do

Status:
Awarded
Awarded:
Outstanding Civil Engineering Student
Nominated Categories
Outstanding Civil Engineering Student
Other Categories
Awards:

In December of 2020, I was named one of the 10 College New Faces of Civil Engineering by the national ASCE, as well as the Mobility Symposium Scholarship from the California Transportation Foundation. I was recognized by the committee for being a dedicated advocate for social justice within the engineering field.

In November of 2020, I received the Student Achievement scholarship and Transportation Vision scholarship from the American Society of Civil Engineers Orange County Branch. The application process required me to submit two 6 minute videos on what I viewed were the most pressing challenges to Southern California’s infrastructure and my future career path.

In July of 2017, I received the Eagle Scout Rank from the Boy Scouts of America, Silicon Valley Council. My Eagle Scout Project, totaling 130 labor hours, was building a community garden at my high school. I had spent about 10 years of my life within the organization leading young boys in learning life skills.

Additional Files


Additional Information

Candidate Information

Name:
Keenan Do
ASCE Member?:
Yes
Company:

Currently focusing on studies/ASCE.
However: Starting in March 2021 at Michael Baker International, Santa Ana division as a transportation engineering/planning intern!

Supervisor:
Education:

B.S. in Civil Engineering, specialization in Transportation. Class of 2021

Experience:

In the summer of 2019, I served as an intern at the City of Santa Clara Department of Field Services. In this construction management role, I relished my time in the field doing surveying work, helping engineers with construction, and learning about the unique concerns of constituents. I worked on major park projects in the city including the creation of the Reed and Grant Soccer park, and playground upgrade of the Machado Park and Bowers Park. I learned that infrastructure can truly change lives, and we need to keep collaborating and working with communities to delvier it in the most effective way.

I found this summer of major social unrest as a call to action. As I watched a two-pronged crisis inflicting on Black and Brown communities: a culture enabling violence and police brutality, and a global pandemic disproportionately killing members of these groups, I realized I had to use my platform for something much bigger than myself. As somebody who hadn’t had any experience with explicit or systemic racism in the past, I realized that I had even more obligation to reflect and respond to a world that seemed to have a widening gaps of quality of life.

I started to connect how current events are related to engineering practices. That led me to learn about the many disparities present within the built environment, including in transportation, housing, and infrastructure, and how these are directly related to public health, education, and economic opportunities. I came to a clear realization: civil engineers are a key component in many of the social injustices that afflict marginalized communities today, both intentionally and unintentionally. What could we do to prevent ourselves from perpetuating them as professional engineers, and how could we rectify inequities within our infrastructure? For the past several months, I have dedicated my time in ASCE to confronting my perceptions about the scope of engineering and asking others to do the same.

As President of the UC Irvine ASCE chapter for the 2020-2021 year, I enlisted the help of my Executive Board and Cabinet and tasked us to understand and re-imagine the state of our built environment. The result was an Instagram campaign called “Engineering a More Equitable Society: Healing Injustice within the Civil Engineering World” documenting social injustices of environmental racism, inequitable urban renewal, redlining, and gentrification, which reached about 5,000 people outside our chapter. In writing these posts, my friends and I grappled with scientific data and experiences that we hadn’t considered before. Through these tough conversations, we concluded our series outlining a future vision for Engineering called “Power with the People” that emphasized Ethics, Equity, and Empathy, which we hope will lead to further identification and investment in addressing infrastructure disparities. In exploring and amplifying the voices of urban planners and community-based organizations who have been doing equity-based work for so long, we realized the power in collaborating for a common goal.

The “Ethical Engineering” Campaign was a large success in spreading awareness and sparking conversation, leading us to make it a permanent component of our chapter’s mission. In the Fall quarter, I invited two outspoken voices for systemic change in the transportation space to speak at our chapter: LA-based transportation justice advocate Tamika Butler, and UCI Law and Urban Planning Professor Joseph DiMento. Attended by UCI students and faculty, as well as professional engineers from our local ASCE OC Chapter and students from other ASCE chapters from across the country, we were very happy with the high turnout that came to hear their fresh perspectives. Both speakers had transformative insight to being principled advocates for equity within the engineering profession and reckoning with our role within society. Following their advice to ally with like-minded people, we presented our work to ASCE student chapters across California and the U.S.. They too recognized the pressing urgency for social justice, leading to our creation of a coalition called “ASCE’s Advancing Equity,” which will continue to share resources for learning and provide space for open and honest conversations.

In an effort to confront the current racial/social injustice my generation is facing, I spearheaded an “ethical engineering” effort with my ASCE chapter. The UC Irvine faculty who attended our events began to listen to our concerns about understanding our role in perpetuating systemic racism. I was asked to serve as a member on the Anti-Racism task force created by the UC Irvine Civil Engineering Department, and worked with our student body to draft a proposal to “re-tool” our civil engineering curriculum, which entails understanding and contemplating the political, social, and economic forces and impacts of infrastructure, as well as committing to recognizing and rectifying injustices within the built environment. My collaborators and I created a proposal that adopted a platform of re-framing engineering to tackle the systemic and unifying challenges of climate change, racism, and poverty. Our proposed updates to the CEE degree’s stated mission objectives made the case for dramatic curriculum changes to prioritize awareness, self-education, and institutionalized accountability. It was well received by the faculty, who are currently evaluating the most efficient way to fulfill its goals. I was also invited by the Orange County Branch’s President to talk about how awareness and action combatting social injustice can be incorporated in the organization’s framework. I hope to continue using our chapter’s programming to challenge our members as well as working engineers to consider how their work affects the most marginalized people of our society.

Comments:

N/A, included above

Contribution to the Profession:

I joined ASCE my sophomore year, and became a participant in the Concrete Canoe and transportation design projects. Participating in the chapter exposed me to the possibilities of creating positive change through leadership.

In my junior year, I was a member of the UCI Concrete Canoe’s Research and Development team, aiding in the casting and curing operations of the canoe.

This senior year, I was elected chapter President. Although I am most proud of our chapter’s work in advancing social justice, I am also very grateful for our other accomplishments. Over the summer, I led the interviews for applicants to our Cabinet, which was a great experience being on the other side of the desk. Together with my E-Board, I led the creation of guest speakers, an alumni panel, and assisted in the growth of our mentorship program as well as our Instagram account by 300 followers. I also led General Meetings and Cabinet/E-Board meetings, forcing me to hold myself accountable to deadlines and standards of quality. I am also undergraduate liason for the UCI chapter of the Orange County Association of Environmental Professionals, assisting in organizing Urban Planning professional development events and promoting club events to the underclassmen urban studies and civil engineering student body.

Civic:

In my junior year, I assumed the role of Scranton Project Manager (UCI ASCE student chapter) which required me to lead a team in designing a community service project. I helped direct the planning and design of a French Drainage system at the local Anteater Village Community Garden to mitigate flooding. We had just finalized our design when the virus forced us to abandon construction.

Suggested Award Summary:

Keenan is as an Engineering student with an urban planner’s mentality. After several years of study in this current field, he realized something that engineers and even planners may refuse to acknowledge – the practice of city design continues to uphold inequities. The expansion of freeways and the bifurcation of communities of color, the legacy of Redlining, the sheer absence of race and class considerations in many transportation debates – Keenan saw these as problems that civil engineers should be tackling. Too often, his push to engage was rejected or ignored. But he found kindred spirits in urban planning. Keenan has made tremendous progress in the last year developing a cogent understanding of the equity and justice imperatives that drive sound planning practice today. He is motivated by a desire to connect personally, one on one, with community members, to marshal resources and provide assistance for communities in need, to demystify the work of planning, engineering, and city design, to advance these efforts with an appreciation of community diversity and community history, and, to be anti-racist in the process. Keenan has an activist engineer’s mindset.

Recently, Keenan has invested significant time and energy in a leadership role at UCI that is enabling him to pursue these justice imperatives on campus. Since March 2020, Keenan has served his community as Chapter President of the UCI American Society of Civil Engineers. In addition to the bulk of administrative duties, delegation of tasks, and conflict resolution he manages well as President, Keenan leads the weightier and certainly more politically challenging responsibility of pushing the Engineering community to address White Supremacy in these times. Two projects he is currently leading are noteworthy. First, Keenan organized and directs the ASCE chapter’s “Ethical Engineering” initiative, which prioritizes empathy, ethics, and equity in design. Keenan’s Ethical Engineering social media communications features content that explains these priorities using engaging graphics and plain language. This is an imaginative way to connect with folks outside of academia to bring them into conversations about equity and city design. Second, Keenan is a leader in the Anti-Racism Taskforce at UCI Engineering. In this capacity, he is out front pushing the Engineering Department to acknowledge the harmful legacy of civil engineering and to evolve its curriculum so it promotes anti-racism, equity, and justice. Despite widespread pushback and indifference, he has persisted. He does so because he knows the Engineering community needs to evolve. Keenan’s commitment to justice and equity is a core component to his character has set him up to become a much needed change-maker in our world. Keenan is currently waiting to hear back from the SoCal master’s of urban planning graduate programs he applied to this winter, where he hopes to carve his path as an engineer/planner, putting community first.

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