The ESSCO AGM took place on Friday, June 15th. For those of you who don’t know about ESSCO, here’s a small spiel about them. ESSCO stands for the Engineering Students Societies Council of Ontario and it represents the approximately 24,000 engineering students at 16 Ontario-wide post-secondary institutions. It acts as the liaison with the Professional Engineers of Ontario, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers and the Council of Ontario Deans of Engineering. ESSCO gathers with the VP-Externals of these 16 different schools, thus resulting in a forum where ideas regarding improvements to student life can be exchanged and thus be implemented in these member schools by their respective VP-Externals. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of ESSCO took place at Queen’s University this year. AGM consists not only of council meetings but also professional development workshops for the delegates of these member schools.
Some of the workshops that were conducted concerned the life of a coop student, using data and analytics to expand student reach within the Engineering faculty, dealing with the problems faced by large Engineering Societies, relations between the University-wide student society (FEDS for Waterloo) and the respective EngSoc, etc. Great ideas were exchanged between delegates throughout these sessions, with hope to improve all the Engineering Societies by making student like more spectacular.
AGM is also the platform where ESSCO executives are elected. The executive for the following year are 75% Waterloo-vians. The positions are as follows: Michael Seliske (Waterloo) – President, Leila Meema-Coleman (Waterloo) – VP Communications, David Birnbaum (Waterloo) – VP Finance and Administration, and Emily Bot (McMaster) – VP Services. A new constitution making multiple changes to the previous one was adopted. At the plenary, after much discussion throughout the weekend, it was finalized that the position of VP Development would be eliminated. It was also determined that Lakehead University would host FYIC for the next year, but the host for next year’s ESSCO AGM is yet to be decided.
Now to the exciting stuff. My experience as a delegate from the Waterloo A delegation to ESSCO AGM was truly one of a kind. I learned a whole lot about other schools, how their EngSocs work, what they do for fun, what’s great about their schools and much more. I was able to meet FYIC 2012 delegates once again and make a lot of new friends. Kingston itself was also a sight to see. I had never been there before and the view of Lake Ontario from the pier at sunset was truly picturesque. Going to this conference has provided me with great insight on the cogwheels of an EngSoc and what must be done for the greater good. An EngSoc’s gotta do what its gotta do.
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