CFES Congress 2013
The Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) hosted their annual meeting, Congress, right here in Waterloo at the beginning of the month (well Kitchener to be exact, but close enough). In case you don’t know, The CFES is an organization that consists of more than 50 engineering student societies across Canada and represents Canadian undergraduate engineering students on a national level.
The theme of this Congress was “Engineering & Sustainability: Developing Responsible Innovation”, and boy were speakers interested in the theme. Most speakers, including the president of Engineers Canada, Catherine Karakatsanis, and our Dean, Pearl Sullivan, emphasized the need to be more responsible with our innovation as future engineers and consider sustainability in our designs.
The conference was not all speakers from industry. There were many sessions aimed to benefit engineering societies, such as building faculty relations, management of volunteers, and creating contingency plans for engineering societies. There were also sessions that were more tailored towards personal growth, including a leadership course that took place during Congress. And finally there were the administration sessions. Those were the sessions about the future of CFES, some of CFES’s initiatives, and of course plenary. To best explain plenary, think of a council meeting that only consists of people who are interested in policies and motions. It really changes your perspective on “effective meetings”.
A couple of shout-outs before moving to something else; I want to say a huge thank you to our own Melissa Deziel, the chair and organizer of this year’s Congress. I’ve been to a lot of conferences, and this one has been one of the best conferences I’ve attended. I also want to say congratulations to Lisa Belbeck, also from Waterloo, on becoming the new CFES president. She’s going to rock it no doubt.
If you are interested in conferences, please come talk to me and I’ll let you know of the upcoming opportunities to attend such conferences.
Elections, and More Elections
Well it’s elections season again. Apart from the Feds elections that run every winter term, that’s elections for Feds executives (President, VP Academics, VP Finance and Administration, and VP Internal) and Councilors, there are elections for Engineering Senator, and most importantly, by-elections for EngSoc’s VP External and WEEF Director. As you may have heard, the VP External and WEEF Director that were elected last term had to step down, and now we need new ones. There’s an entire section for the elections in this edition ofThe iron Warrior, but I just wanted to give you a brief description of each position.
The VP External is responsible to liaise with other engineering societies and represent our EngSoc on provincial and national council (namely ESSCO and CFES). They are also in charge of cross-university events such as National Engineering Month.
The WEEF Director is responsible for the day-to-day operations of WEEF. This includes accepting submission, arranging and meetings with the Board of Directors, working with the assistant directors to promote WEEF, and decide on WEEF donations along with the WEEF council.
By the time this issue is out, it will be too late to run for these roles. But you can still participate by voting. All the info regarding the elections can be found in the elections section of this issue.
Well that’s all I have for now. See y’all soon.
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