Students chapter updates

The ASEE Board of Directors recently named Ronald E, Barr as the director of student chapters. Barr, a professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, is also the UT-Austin student chapter advisor.

Student chapters are a small but important part of ASEE. Following are the activities of a few of the active student chapters. For more information on ASEE student chapters, please see the Web site at: www.asee.org/student.

University of Michigan

At the University of Michigan (LM), the ASEE student chapter was the recipient of the Elaine Harden Award recognizing the engineering student society that best develops and motivates leadership and encourages services. Through the Graduate Pedagogy Initiative of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the student chapter was awarded more than $15,000 for the first year of a pilot project named the Engineering Teaching Development Institute (EDTI). EDTI is designed to improve the long-term teaching skills of engineering graduate student instructors.

To recognize outstanding student teaching throughout the UM College of Engineering, the student chapter held its 5th Annual Outstanding Student Instructor Awards (OSIA) on April 15, 1999.

Nominated by their students and course instructors, each winner received a $500 award and a one-year student membership to ASEE. The 1998-99 OSIA winners were: Gary Brouhard, Scott G. lAter, Pom Malakul, Dan Osborne, and Murat Ulasir The program featured a lecture entitled "Treat Your Students Like Your Children and Treat Your Children Like Your Students," by Professor Khalil Najafi. Additionally, to promote engineering among local high school students, two students from the Southeastern Michigan High School Science Fair were recognized as "ASEE Best Engineering Project Award- winners.

University of Texas at Austin

The ASEE student chapter at the University of Texas at Austin had three events during the Fall 1999 semester. The first event, on September 20, was a talk by ASEE President-Elect Wallace I Fowler, who spoke about his teaching career and the value of ASEE in his professional development.

On October 18, a panel session was held to discuss the pros and cons of attending engineering graduate school. Undergraduate members of the engineering honor societies were invited. The panelists were six graduate students representing the different engineering majors at UT-Austin, and the moderator was a student chapter officer.

A brown bag luncheon was held on November 17. Fifteen graduate students from the student chapter enjoyed an informal talk by Jon Olson, a new assistant professor of petroleum engineering. He talked about what it's like to be a new faculty member.

Chapter officers for 1999-2000 are: President-Jennifer Maynard, Vice President-David Shields, Secretary-Fernando Ulloa, Treasurer-Zeno Philip, Information Resources-Michael Tsurikov, Membership-David Garza.

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Dec 1999
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