Jessie Dakota (Kodee) Phillips, a senior majoring in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering has been named the Student of the Year by the Alabama Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
The award, which comes with a $5,000 check, is the most recent honor for Phillips, who was also recognized in the spring semester as the CCEE Department’s 2026 Undergraduate Student of the Year. The statewide ASCE recognition is a rare honor, however, with Phillips becoming the first UAB student in more than 20 years to receive the award.
“This is a tremendous honor for Kodee,” said CCEE Chair Avinash Unnikrishnan, Ph.D. “He is a hard-working and diligent student who deserves every bit of recognition coming his way.”
Phillips is on track to graduate after the fall semester, completing a UAB career that has been defined by academic excellence. He has been included in the President’s List six times and the Dean’s List twice. He is a recipient of the Alabama Road Builders Association Ed and Charolette Rodgers Scholarship; the Dr. Ed Segner, Jr., Endowed Scholarship; the Alabama Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineering Scholarship; and he holds a 4.0 GPA in his engineering coursework (with a 3.95 overall GPA). He is president of Chi Epsilon and is a member of Tau Beta Pi and phi Kappa Phi.
Phillips previously interned at Insite Engineering, and he currently works at St. John & Associates in Cullman. At both jobs, his responsibilities have included working with teams of engineers and CAD technicians by helping generate construction-plan sets, designing site layouts and performing stormwater analysis, among other responsibilities.
Prior to this week’s announcement, the last UAB student to receive the statewide Student of the Year award from ASCE was Stephen Cauthen in 2005.