The weekend of June 25, 2010 gathered engineering students from across Ontario for the Engineering Student Societies’ Council of Ontario’s Annual General Meeting, more colloquially referred to as ESSCO AGM.
ESSCO, a networking association for Engineering Student Societies (ESS) across Ontario, holds the conference every year in the hopes of helping EngSocs, engineering undergraduate programs, and the engineering profession, grow and become more widely recognized across the province.
This year’s meeting saw faces from 15 undergraduate engineering schools, as well as many professional representatives from the engineering industry. Guest speakers included representatives from the PEO and OSPE, as well as established engineers from industry and inspirational speakers. Sessions were held the entire weekend, encouraging the workings of proactive engineering students from undergraduate schools universities across the province for the betterment of engineering.
With a vast array of conferences and organizations running simultaneously in the modern world, one cannot help but beg the question, what makes ESSCO and its AGM stand out? What does it offer to an individual as an engineering student, professional engineer, or a member of the general public? In fact, many ask, What does ESSCO do? In the interest of providing a proper, and descriptive answer to these questions, one must begin, not surprisingly, at the beginning.
ESSCO, in its mission statement, outlines several objectives the council strives to achieve, including “to establish and maintain a professional and effective communication network amongst its member engineering societies… to facilitate constructive information exchange and professional development for its delegates” as well as to “perform outreach to the community-at-large”. Put more simply, ESSCO exists to provide the means for which schools can communicate with the proper professionals, or ESSs, to pursue the betterment of engineering education, professional development or advocacy at their specific institution. Most benefits of ESSCO occur in the form of networking, to allow for the exchange of advice, recruitment of talent, or even co-operative work between societies and organizations to pursue those initiatives which ESSCO members find worthy of execution.
A prime example of such an initiative was the “Newspaper Exchange” proposed at one of the AGM sessions. This idea, put forth by the University of Waterloo’s Society B, proposes the exchange of engineering publications from each undergraduate institution to all other undergraduate schools. This provides the means for keeping up to date on the happenings of each school across Ontario, providing the opportunity for other schools to learn from the events occurring across the province.
The Annual General Meeting itself, allows the representatives from all members active in ESSCO to come together, and bring forth ideas, much like the newspaper exchange, and brainstorm possible opportunities to promote engineering, the PEO and OSPE. This information is communicated to the VP Externals of each society. The overall hope is that, VP Externals, in representing their institutions, not stop at communicating the doings of external organizations to their schools. Instead, it is expected they also act as a means for the ideas and innovations of engineering students at their schools to reach the proper external organizations, and hopefully come into execution. Students often possess inspirational suggestions for the betterment of engineering education, of ESSs, or pursuit of a P. Eng, or engineering advocacy. Many are unaware of where to go with their ideas, or even unaware of the possibility of having their ideas come into execution. This is why ESSCO exists, and this is why its members gather for the Annual General Meeting.
For the 2010 AGM, almost all member schools gathered and did exactly this. Students offered suggestions and advice to member schools to help each society successfully pursue common goals. This included sessions on “Engaging your Engineering Society”, “National Engineering Month”, “Women in Engineering” and many others. It also provided information sessions by any of the key engineering groups in the province and country. Organizational representatives from the Canadian Federation of Engineering Student, Professional Engineering of Ontario, and the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, all provided valuable information about their organizations and how each student, society or professional can use these organizations to the bets of their advantage. Members also came together for the election of their 2010/2011 ESSCO executives, and subsequently, a plenary session providing direction for ESSCO and its members in the coming year. The pursuit of ESSCO’s initiatives and goals will be overseen by the newly elected executives. Consisting of President Alessia Danelon from the University of Waterloo “B”, Vice President Communications Josh Levitan from Queen’s University, Vice President Development Cameron Winterink from University of Waterloo “A”, Vice President Finance and Administration Stephen Schauer from Ryerson University, and Vice President Service Ryan Farrugia from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, this year hopes to provide many new opportunities to the professional and undergraduate members of ESSCO, as well as for engineering profession in Ontario.
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