IEEE Student Group Celebrates First Annual Banquet

On Thursday, April 23, 2009, student members of the IEEE at Maryland gathered to celebrate the success of the organization in recent years. The banquet took place at Varsity Grille, in College Park.

The evening started out with a brief introduction from Chief Technical Officer, Phil Luo. After the dinner, former president of IEEE at Maryland, Derek Wood and current president, Jeremiah Tsang gave a brief chapter history.

IEEE at UMD first got its exposure when the new website launched February 26, 2006. Today, the UMD IEEE website has over 1 million hits since the launch, and is linked from sites such as ENGR-FYI, the ECE Department's homepage and the National IEEE webpage.

Starting Fall 2006, former President Eric Germann decided to transform the lounge and by the summer of 2007, it was complete. This new lounge provided members with a home as well as a place for positive studying with new computers, ergonomic chairs and tables.

In the more recent years, IEEE has increased exposure by organizing social events to reach out to undergrads. Further exposure was reached through collaboration with the other ECE organizations of HKN and ECE-USC.

IEEE announced a new mission statement and followed through by organizing academic tutoring events and providing a test bank. In addition, IEEE hosted many professional talks ranging from interviewing skills and job finding to information regarding the different sub-disciplines of ECE. Currently, there are about 60 – 80 active members.

IEEE Outstanding Student Awards were given to a member "who has shown outstanding commitment to the organization and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering." The branch counselors, Professors William Levine and Romel Gomez, presented these awards to William Hong, Jeff Lee, and Phil Luo.

Next year’s board members have been selected as the following:

President – Elisha Ma

Vice President of Internal Affairs - William Hong

Vice President of External Affairs - Nicole Bohannon

Secretary - Kelly Davis

Treasurer - Christina Lam

Chief Technical Officer - Mark Finkelstein

Academic Outreach Chair - Peter Phelps

To see photos from the First Annual IEEE Banquet, please click below:
http://www.ece.umd.edu/News/images/09_04_IEEE_Banquet/

Published April 28, 2009