Hey folks! Want to hear something scary? We’ve already finished a third of the Spring term! Where does the time go? I don’t know. Anyway, last week I had the pleasure of attending the Engineering Student Societies’ Council of Ontario Annual General Meeting (ESSCO AGM) hosted by the University of Windsor Engineering Society. I wanted to use this article as an opportunity to inform you what ESSCO is, what it does, and how you can get involved!
ESSCO officially started on 21 November 1987 and today has 16 member Societies across the province. ESSCO has the objectives of representing undergraduate engineering students in Ontario to professional associations, academia, industry, and government; facilitating communication between member societies on matters of student and society interest; and promoting and increasing awareness and interest in the engineering profession to elementary and high school students. There are four ESSCO conferences hosted annually: the First Year Integration Conference (FYIC), the Annual General Meeting (AGM), the President’s Meeting (PM), and Professional Engineers Ontario Student Conference (PEO-SC). FYIC is hosted every winter term, with sessions geared towards empowering students to become more involved in their respective societies and meeting first years and VP Externals across Ontario. AGM is hosted every May and has sessions on professionalism, introducing the newly elected VP Externals and delegates to ESSCO, and electing a new executive team for ESSCO. PM is held in September, generally for the executive teams of Engineering Societies across Ontario to meet and share best practices and discuss strengths of weaknesses of their schools, ESSCO, and how they can improve. PEO-SC is held in the fall term, and serves the purpose of introducing delegates of member schools to PEO and the benefits of becoming a Professional Engineer after graduating.
The hosts of each of these conferences is determined by placing bids on these conferences. These bids are placed by one or two students from the members schools who are interested in chairing the conference. Each society is required to bid on any of the 4 previously mentioned conference at least once every three years. In addition, ESSCO is also responsible for facilitating the Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC), where the top teams from each schools’ engineering competitions qualify to compete with students across the province. Conference and OEC bids are for the most part placed at FYIC, AGM, and PM during plenary, which is a session for the member schools to put forward motions on matters relevant to engineering students across the province and vote on these motions. Waterloo Engineering Societies A and B are two separate members of ESSCO, and as a result hold two votes at plenary.
ESSCO also runs two major events in addition to conferences: National Engineering Month (NEM) and Wonderland Math and Physics Day. These events have one ESSCO director each that is in charge of finding volunteers for the events, getting member schools motivated and involved, and ensuring the event runs as smoothly as possible. Any student from a member school can apply for a directorship on the ESSCO website, and if you are looking for a leadership and project management role, I’d strongly encourage getting involved in ESSCO through a directorship!
If you have any questions about ESSCO and how to get involved, please feel free to email me at vpexternal.a@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca and I’d be more than happy to chat with you about bidding on a conference, taking on a directorship, or attending a conference as a delegate! Best of luck with midterms everyone!!!
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