Student Engineers' Council to host National Association of Engineering Student Councils conference
Virginia Tech’s Student Engineers’ Council will host the National Association of Engineering Student Councils (NAESC) at its 2006 meeting near Washington, D.C. April 6-9.
“The conference will be an excellent chance for students to meet fellow students who share similar interests regarding leadership, management, ethics, and engineering skills” said event co-chair Emily Woodward, a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics in Virginia Tech’s College of Science and recent graduate of Virginia Tech’s aerospace and ocean engineering program. “The 300 attendees are engineering student leaders from 42 different universities from California to New York. They represent the technological leadership of the future.”
Michael Willemann, an undergraduate student majoring in materials science and engineering in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, is the other co-chair. Both Willeman and Woodward are from Woodbridge, Va.
Ronald L. Ewing, chief executive officer of Dewberry of Fairfax, Va., will open the conference at the Westfields Marriot in Chantilly, Va., with a welcoming introductory speech on April 7. Other Dewberry speakers include Dan Pleasant, president, and Doug Fahl, managing principal. Also scheduled to present is Mike Shannon of the National Council for Examiners and Engineers in Surveying.
The April 8 banquet at the Mellon Auditorium will feature presenters from Lockheed Martin Corporation of Bethesda, Md, including Chuck Cantello, vice president for sensors and advanced programs. Other speakers during the two-day event are Raymond Orbach, director, Office of Science, Department of Energy; the Department of Defense’s Dwight Williams, named the Professional Engineer of the Year; Jesus de la Garza, program director at the National Science Foundation; and Joseph Toole, Patricia Toole, Chad Thompson and Melissa Ridenour of the Federal Highway Administration.
Conference sponsors are: Lockheed Martin, Dewberry, NCEES, US Department of Transportation, and Honeywell. The Student Engineers’ Council has also contributed to this program. Michael Chappell, chair of the Virginia Tech Student Engineers’ Council and a mechanical engineering senior from Blacksburg, Va., was in charge of soliciting sponsors.
The Student Engineers’ Council at Virginia Tech generates income to sponsor events from its widely known Engineering Expo, an annual career fair. The students use the income from Expo to allocate resources to various philanthropic efforts.
The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college's 5,500 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 1,800 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology.
