First official club meeting with/as brand new officers!

Posted by Bruce

Ever feel nervous about becoming involved in a club/organization?
Well... I myself become a brand new leader of "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers" or widely known as the acronym "IEEE". There are also, 3 other brand new officers, making it a whole new generation.

Short detail about IEEE:
IEEE is an worldwide organization for Electrical Engineers and it gives many opportunities for students and professionals to learn about what is going on in today's technological world and be up to date on the latest research. One of the main things about IEEE is that it can offer scholarships and networking opportunities. If interested, you can learn more about it at IEEE.org.

UAF classes started on Sept 5th, 2013 and campus is in full swing. Our first officer meetings didn't happen till the third week of school on Thursday or Friday due to scheduling and conflicts but... our IEEE student meetings are supposed to be held the last week (or fourth week in this case) of each month on either Tuesday or Thursday. Our guest speaker has said they only had time to come on Tuesday. We were scrambling to get things organized and planned with a very constraint amount of time.

We were feeling nervous at first to how this meeting would turn up thinking, how many people that we reached out to will come? Will we have enough pizza to feed everybody who comes? Will our speaker actually be there as promised? Will we have done a good job in reaching out to students to come and keep continuing to join us in the future?

All of these questions arise in our heads as we prepare for our first meeting, but...

On September 24, 2013 the IEEE club has had its first meeting this semester with four brand new officers that were selected at the end of spring semester 2013. The meeting has had a great turn out of about 35+ electrical engineering students and couple other disciplines. Room 341 was full, and when I mean full.... these classrooms are not very big like an auditorium. But judging from my previous experience in going to the meetings before I became an officer, usually of about 20 students or less would attend the meetings in the middle of the semester. Everybody was able to get their pizza, and we had just enough for everybody that showed up. People were enjoying their time as we did our introduction, and I was able to get some great feedbacks that we did a good job.The guest speakers from Tesoro did an awesome job in presenting information to those that were present at the meeting. Information such as internships, what Tesoro does, what an individual can do working for them, and any other questions asked were answered.

I am hoping that the we can maintain the amount of students that showed up before and hope to go beyond what the previous leaders  have done in growing the club and ourselves. I believe if the team is willing to make a good effort in reaching the goals, then anything could be possible without worries.

What can a student get when becoming involved in a student club/organization?  I would like to think, what ever you want to make most of it. Depending on the club/organization, one can get involved with the school community, city community, projects, have guest speakers, fundraisers, travel, networking, leadership skills, and an endless amount of ideas.

So get INVOLVED!