Footnote numbering format

Question

In my case, the authors' affiliations are labeled with Arabic numbers. I'd like to get footnote labeled with letters. I've tried with the option \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}} but failed.

I'm using ascelike-new document class. Could anybody give me suggestions?

The MWE is shown herein,

\documentclass[Journal,letterpaper]{ascelike-new}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\usepackage{lmodern}\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[figurename=Fig.,labelfont=bf,labelsep=period]{caption}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,citecolor=red,linkcolor=black]{hyperref}
\usepackage{bm}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{ulem}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{cancel}
\usepackage{dsfont}
\usepackage{framed}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{lastpage}
\usepackage{mathptmx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{algorithm}
\usepackage{algpseudocode}
\usepackage[mathscr]{euscript}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{lineno}
\linenumbers
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.14}
\usepackage{fancyhdr} % Needed to define custom headers/footers
\setlength{\headheight}{15pt}
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}
\begin{document}
\title{An example to show how it doesn't work}

\author[1]{AA}
\author[2]{BB}
\author[1,*]{CC\footnote{hope it works}}

\affil[1]{Department AA}
\affil[2]{Department BB}

\maketitle
\end{document}`

Best.