Our 10^thAnnual Past President’s Virtual Meeting and Tim Fleming Memorial Scholarship Award Ceremony was another excellent event celebrating the Sierra Chapter. On February 17^th, your legendary Past Presidents were joined by an assortment of members and guests including our Guest Speaker, ACEC-CA State President Kurt Yoshii.

Although the parade of Past Presidents was impressive (see the list at the end of this article), the highlight for me was introducing the10th annual winners of the Tim Fleming Memorial Scholarship, Daniel Vitoria and Marifer Barriga. Remember, we also made a few changes to this year’s scholarship: we increased it from $2,000 to $5,000,opened applications to Masters students and targeted two scholarships! Our scholarship review team of Ryan Fleming and Susan Fleming-Bentley received 14 applications and narrowed it down to Daniel and Marifer.

Daniel is a senior at UOP planning to graduate this May with his Bachelor’s degree and his Masters in 2022. Daniel is going to school full time at the moment. Marifer is a junior at UC Davis and planning to graduate in June 2022 with her Bachelor’s degree. She is also working two jobs: one for Caltrans District 3 in their Transportation Analytics, Modeling and Forecasting Branch and the other for the University of California Pavement Research Center. Congratulations again to both of this year’s winners!

Remembering Tim Fleming’s legacy in this way is absolutely a win-win for our Chapter and the schools in our area. Thanks are also due the California Transportation Foundation (CTF), who administers the scholarship fund. In addition, the Sierra Chapter Board approved another $4,000 donation to the scholarship which is now an endowed scholarship!

Following the scholarship presentation, State President Kurt Yoshii with Ninyo and Moore, gave us an update on what is happening at the State level. He also provided an excellent overview of ACEC National and ACEC-CA programs for 2020/2021. A very impressive list of accomplishments in spite of all the constraints provided by the pandemic. Finally, Past Presidents joined us from as far back as 1997, Chuck Cunningham, up through and including our 2019-2020 Past President, Kevin Gustorf.  Thanks again to all the Past Presidents, Kurt Yoshii, Ryan Fleming and Susan Fleming-Bentley, and our scholarship winners for making this another great Sierra Chapter event!

Past Presidents in Attendance