So it’s 2012, we’re into second term, and it’s giving me a great opportunity to look back on the roller coaster of a first term. For the first 6 or so weeks, I was spending a lot of time away from campus, connecting with other schools, APEGBC, and industry.

In order for the rest of this post to make sense, here’s a short description of the various organizations that the EUS is a part of throughout the year.  To start off, WESST (Western Engineering Student Societies’ Team) is an association between most of the accredited engineering programs in Western Canada (from BC to Manitoba). Its purpose is to improve the various engineering student societies through informal information sharing. It also oversees the Western Engineering Competition (WEC), the qualifying competition for the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC).  WESST is a regional member of the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES), whose main goal is to provide bilingual opportunities for engineering students across the nation.

The weekend after Frosh Retreat (which was awesome), I was headed off to Kelowna for the President’s Meeting of the CFES. The main goal of this is to bring the VP Externals from across the country together, to forge new relationships that can help the student societies share information and improve the way they serve and interact with their constituents. It also gives the newbies a chance to experience plenary (where voting and motions get passed) and get used to the style, the current chair, and each other. This was especially important this year as the new chair had a different style than normal, so even the old fogeys were a bit confused.

CFES President’s Meeting

Shortly after returning from PM, I was off to WESST Retreat & Olympics, which serves as the annual general meeting of the Western Engineering Student Societies’ Team and informal information sharing of the western provinces and engineering schools!  It’s goal is to facilitate the informal transfer of information, and keep us as a uniform body for dealings with the CFES. It was a great weekend, with a bunch of new faces, and 2 of our own were elected to executive positions.. again! For those of you that dont’ know, UBC has had 2/3 of the WESST exec for 4 elections now! Congratulations to Madison Myrfield, our conferences coordinator and current WESST VP Communications, for his election as the incoming (and now current) President, and to Michael Elder, our Godiva Band leader, the new VP Communications. Just shows what an awesome school we are, and what sort of quality students we have kicking around.

UBC & UBCO Delegation on the road to WESST Retreat ’11

 
With another quick turnaround, I was off to the APEGBC annual conference and AGM in Kelowna (again) the following weekend. There I took part in the Student Advisory Committee, which helps APEGBC determine how they can better serve the engineering students across BC with the MAPS program. That’s Membership Advantage Program for Students, and all of you should sign up if you haven’t already! The faculty pre-pays all of the fees so it’s free! You can check it out here.

As this is already a lot of information, I’ll leave this as Part 1/2. I hope you’ve learned some more about the different organizations there are out there, and what I was up to this term! I encourage all of you to consider applying for conferences, as it’s a great opportunity to increase your network, learn from other students, and explore how you can be more involved with your engineering undergraduate life!

Everytime about this time of year I always wonder where the summer went. And every year I look back and realize how busy I’ve been. This year is certainly no different. Since the new EUS Executive were elected in March, it has been a whirlwind or meetings, sessions, workshops, seminars, planning, emailing, and occasional recreating.

Each new Executive starts off pretty similar. We have a giant Council Meeting called the Strategic Planning Meeting (SPM) which includes all the incoming and outgoing EUS Executives, Club Presidents, Ex-Officio Club Leaders (AOE, ESTC, EWB, SPD), and other student leaders. We talk about what went well or not so well during the last year and what we would like to change for the upcoming year. This year’s Council was very engaged and provided some great input and direction to help guide us throughout the summer months.

The next important part of or summer is the Exec Retreat. The last couple of years, the Exec stayed in posh cabins. This year, we decided to rough it and go camping, leaving our computers and technology behind and going old-school with pencils, markers, and flip-charts. Our destination was Hicks Lake at Sasquatch Provincial Park. Despite not seeing any real Sasquatch and chilly temperatures at night, we still accomplished much and had our first real opportunity to get to know our fellow Exec and figure out how to make the upcoming year the best it can possibly be.

Before we knew it, the first weekend of May sprung up on us, and the Exec were off to WESST Executives’ Meeting. For those unfamiliar with WESST it stands for the Western Engineering Students’ Societies Team and includes all the accredited engineering schools from Manitoba west to UVIC. The purpose of WESST EM is to provide incoming executives from the different student societies a chance to get to know one another, share challenges and successes that they’ve had, and partake in professional development workshops that are specifically geared to engineering students. WESST EM was hosted by SFU this year, so we didn’t have far to travel. Two of the three current WESST Executive are from UBC, Will McEwan and Madison Myrfield, so we are in good hands.

Shortly after WESST EM, we lost our beloved VP ComAd Hans Seidemann, to the wilds of the Yukon. We were able to trudge on without him and keep working away to be ready for the Fall.

Summer is the most important part of the year for the EUS Executive, because a lot of the grunt work for the whole year needs to be done. A lot of events and activities require planning and booking months in advance, and it is almost impossible to recover once classes start in the Fall if the summer work hasn’t been done. The other side of the coin is that many of our key volunteers are off working in remote areas and unable to put in as much time to their EUS roles as they would like. This creates a bit of extra work for the Executive and volunteers back in Vancouver, but every year the EUS Exec are able to manage and be ready for the Fall term. I would like to personally thank everyone that worked so hard this summer to help us accomplish so much.

While Hans was in the Yukon, a few of us were on campus taking summer classes. Part of being an EUS Executive means devoting a lot of time to volunteering, so any chance to take a course or three in the summer and lighten our Winter Semester load is gladly accepted. Our VP Academic Jack Park, VP External Alex Lush, and I were all full-time students over the summer. The other two exec, VP Events Steph Mah and VP Finance Ian Campbell were both working full-time over the summer, but luckily for me both were working on campus so I was able to see and talk to them often. Steph is working for Geering-Up and Ian is over doing programming for the Brain Behaviour Research Lab (where he will continue in the Fall).

A couple of new things to look forward to this year include the comeback of OktoberfEUSt (on a smaller scale than before), more sporting events, and hosting parties with some of the other student groups on campus (like Nursing!). The UBC Engineering Competition continues to grow, and this year we host the Canadian Engineering Competition. There will be more social media integration, new websites, more tweets (follow @ubcengineers on twitter), and maybe even a Frosh Week app for your Android or iPhone. The Academic team will provide more tutoring than ever and the Cheeze has a great new MAME Arcade.

Over the last couple of weeks, Hans has returned and our Frosh preparations have kicked into high gear. One thing the current EUS Executive doesn’t lack is enthusiasm. We are very fortunate to have such great leaders to help get us through the year. I look forward to meeting more of you this year and hearing your ideas and feedback on what you would like to see in the future. There will always be opportunities to get involved, so send an email to volunteer@ubcengineers.ca and let our Volunteer Coordinator know you would like to help out.

…the Cheeze courtyard that is, especially since it’s got a new shiny coat of paint and a pressure washing.  If you’d like to help polish it up a little more, we’re holding another Cheeze Renos party this Saturday, August 13th.

So, I’ve been pretty radio silent here on the exec blog all summer, but that’s not to say that I haven’t done my fair share of work.  Over the past 3 months or so, I’ve scoped out Frosh Retreat locations, E-Ball locations and welcomed a new set of spirit committee members to my Events team.  Frosh Week planning is underway and fast approaching and I’m itching to don my cape and smear my face with red paint for Imagine Day!

On the work front, I’ve been busting my butt for GEERing Up! running engineering, science and technology summer camps for kids all summer.  If you live in Thunderbird Residence and have been woken up by my kids at lunchtime, I apologize, but in all seriousness, if you found a orange and black model rocket on the roof of your building, we would love to get it back. =) My sandals tan is coming along nicely and I haven’t killed anyone yet, so it’s going really great so far!

When I’m not working or doing EUS stuff, I’ve been enjoying the summer beach sun, absolutely delicious gelato and a pair of snazzy new glasses (I CAN SEE!).  Went to the Chromeo concert last Tuesday (CHROMEO-OOOOH-OH) and have sat my butt in front of my sewing machine again (expect snazzy new capes).   In general, all is well and since I’m only returning to work tomorrow after a week of vacation, it’s to be expected.

~Stephanie

So, summer’s half over (wait, what??). Figured it’s time to update everyone on what I’ve been up to recently. I’ll try and keep this short and sweet. Sweeter than our new vending machine stock? Hardly.

I’ve restocked the frozen and drink vending machines for the first time since the end of classes. Now that we’re going to be keeping the building open on a regular schedule over the summer, of course we have to supply everyone with ways to keep cool and hydrated. The drink machine is now filled with the drinks pictured below:

What’s that, Will Gallego? No Diet Coke? Hah, owned. We’ve replaced Diet Coke with Nestea Green Tea. I’m going to put a poll up at some point in September to see what people think of the selection. The least popular drinks may be voted off the island. As usual, everything’s $1 – the cheapest anywhere on campus.

The frozen vending machine has also been restocked. We have ice-cream sandwiches ($0.75), as well as ice-cream bars in flavours such as fudge, chocolate-coated vanilla, vanilla-almond crunch, and cornetto-like cones ($1.25). The astute among you will notice prices are a quarter more than last year; sorry Our costs have gone up, so there isn’t too much we can do about it. If sales pick up massively or anyone can find a place that sells super-cheap ice-cream, we may be able to lower them again. Here’s hoping!

The MAME cabinet project has stalled a bit, because I’ve been looking for a computer to use as the host for it. However, all the parts are in. We just got an ArcadeVGA card from Ultimarc (an awesome arcade parts retailer) and it should be one of the last things we need. If you ever plan on making one of these yourself, come talk to me and I’ll give you the lowdown.

UPDATE: Had some hardware issues with the control interface, but the software is currently running stability tests. When we get a replacement keyboard encoder it’s good to go!

Budget stuff: AMS budget submission is going to happen sometime in July, so I’ll have to start on that soon (I basically have to rewrite ours using their template and submit it for approval). Once that’s taken care of, I’ll be going through the account codes and changing some names to make them more relevant to our current budget. Also setting up the club aid fund account.

On a personal note, I’ve been enjoying my job at the UBC Brain Behaviour Laboratory. Very interesting stuff, great people, etc. etc. I’m starting work at SFU tomorrow on a project to develop a robotic wrist exoskeleton for motor skills recovery after brain damage in association with the BBL, so that’s gonna be pretty sick. Also got back to running, cycling and other things I wish the weather was better for. I have yet to go to the beach this summer :/

-Ian

I just love the Vancouver summer weather (minus the sporadic rain…)!

The sunshine is great but that’s no excuse to slack off during the summer.  I’ve been taking some summer courses while staying on our lovely UBC campus. Of course, I’m staying on top of my portfolio as well.  EUS Scholarship winners will be announced shortly, so stay tuned.  And speaking of staying tuned, watch out for how our Academic Review website, which will be revamped in late July

What have I been doing other than school and EUS?  Well, let’s see what has happened so far…

GO CANUCKS GO!  I know, I know, we didn’t get the cup, but what are true fans for?  Not rioting, that’s for sure.  It was unfortunate to hear that some of the UBC’ers got carried away with something that they would not normally do, but I was glad to not see any Engineers’ names pop up in the media (scary media).

I like to stay super active, and I wanted to try something new this summer.  So I picked up dragon boating, and wow, it’s been nothing but awesome!  Not only am I on a team with an awesome name (Dragonboat Z), we got a silver medal in the recent dragon boat festival

We also have quite a few UBC Engineers (and other faculties) on the team, which makes it that much more exciting.

I had the pleasure of meeting some of the soon-to-be-UBC-Engineers through a couple of Faculty ran high school events, and I’ll tell you that I’m super excited to officially welcome them in September!

That is all.

-Jack