ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Since its debut in 2014, the Maker Faire Rochester has been a festival many residents have looked forward to throughout the year. 

What You Need To Know

  • Maker Faire is a gathering of engineers to artists to scientists and crafters\
  • One of its vendors, RIT Steel Bridge Team, is a student-led club that allows participants to design, fabricate and construct a scaled steel bridge to compete in the annual ASCE Student Symposia

  • The symposia takes place in the spring and includes competitions, professional and personal development opportunities for its civil engineering and the ASCE community

Student-run club Steel Bridge Team, from the Rochester Institute of Technology, stole the show at the annual Maker Faire. There are a team that had started with just three people during COVID, but has now flourished.

“Me and my roommate and like all the other people during that year were like the first team coming back,”  team treasurer Justin Royster said. “So like obviously our first competition was like, ‘okay, we have to try, like we're doing something.’”

Over the course of an academic year, students design, fabricate, and construct a model scaled steel bridge to compete in the annual ASCE Student Symposia.

“We're hoping we'll go to nationals or whatever, but honestly, we got third place last year and we were shocked,” Royster said.

The symposia takes place in the spring and includes competitions, professional and personal development opportunities for its civil engineering and the ASCE community. Winners of select competitions will be invited to the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships.

RIT Steel Bridge Team co-president Drake Saysomvang says he is thankful for the teams’ sponsors for materials and additional funding. 

“The real meat and potatoes of the competition, though, is the build ability and the actual load bearing capacity build ability,” Saysomvang said. “You get 30 minutes to build the bridge. We've designed the bridge to hold 2,500 pounds. Now that's about the size of a small Sedan. If I brought my Civic in here, this bridge by design should be able to hold it.”

Getting hands-on experience and gaining the skills of the professional world of engineering.

“It's a huge hands-on opportunity to actually build this entire bridge and get a bit of a taste of what's actually in the field,” Saysomvang said. “Because it's not just creating the bridge, it's not just designing. It's all about the little details about project management.”

And even for others, who may not want to be engineers.

“I am a film major, so it's a broad major,” Royster said. “But if I have a background in engineering, I'm working in teams like this, then maybe it opens more opportunities for people that like, hey, like this guy knows how this like engineering works or civil engineering works.”

As its students build bridges, they have also been building bonds stronger than steel.

“Finding a family with my team members,” Saysomvang said. “Most of us have known each other for more than two years now. Now that it's real, it just feels that much more genuine and that much more engaging for all of us.”