Hello Everyone!
For those of you who haven’t met me, I’m Tim Bandura and this is my first term as your President of the Engineering Society. I’m in 3B Mechanical Engineering so not only do I look forward to helping all of you, I am also looking forward at my design course and the trebuchet I get to build!
Our first meeting was on Wednesday the 22nd. Aside from a few issues, it went pretty well! There was plenty of food for everyone and I’d like to thank Mike McCauley for running a tight show. Another huge shout out goes the Anish Bhutani for taking meeting minutes!
I gave a report on my goals for the term and I’d just like to talk about a few. My first goal is to ensure that we, as an executive team, work well together and provide you all the best of our efforts. We hold weekly executive meetings to provide regular updates and evaluate our progress. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know! Another one of my goals is to increase our visibility. Sometimes, I feel that exec isn’t always visible or approachable so I’d like to change that. I’d like to drop by all your classes informally throughout the term just to see how you’re doing. As another one of my goals, I want to look at how to promote growth and long term planning in our Engineering Society. If the Faculty can have five year plans, why can’t we? My initial plan is to look at the creation of a mission and a vision statement, as well as a list of possible long term plans. If you have any ideas, please talk to me! This can’t be done by only one person. You all have a stake in the Engineering Society and a say in where we go. Our policy manual was written and passed just over a year ago. There are many gaps and conflicts with it, as is true for any new governing document. I’d like to review it with a group of students to clean it up. If you are interested, keep an eye out for more details. This will probably start after midterms.
I’m happy to report that the statue in the CPH Courtyard will stay purple as opposed to its typical orange! In other words, I attended the Engineering Faculty Council meeting. This meeting is the highest level of decision making within the Faculty of Engineering. The Chairs of each Department sit on this committee along with the Dean and several associate deans. I can report that this fall the WEEF Lab computers were fully renovated and that later this fall Helix lab (RCH Basement) and the Electrical Commons Lab (E5) will be upgraded and finished. I also attended the Engineering Student Society’s Council of Ontario (ESSCO) President’s Meeting after the first week of school. This conference was a chance for the Presidents and Vice President Externals meet and share thoughts and procedures with each other. Leah will report more on this, but I just wanted to briefly update you all that I met with the other Presidents from across Ontario. We had a good two hour discussion on dealing with Dean relations and dealing with our main campus student societies (like FedS for us). Needless to say, Waterloo is one of the best schools as far as relations between groups go.
I’m interested to hear what students’ thoughts are on these topics and any other ideas/ concerns you may have. You can find me in the office or email me at asoc_prez@engmail.uwaterloo.ca. I hope to hear from many students this term, and get to know how people feel about on and off-campus issues. One final thing from your president, please visit our brand new EngSoc website, found at engsoc.uwaterloo.ca.
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