2007 Inter-Society Officers Workshop Summary

The Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) held the annual Inter Society Officers Workshop (ISOW) on June 16, 2007 (Saturday) from 10:30 am - 1:00 pm at the Redmond Public Library meeting room.

There were 15 engineers in attendance from 9 different engineering societies. As each participant signed in with their information (including work phone number and e-mail address), they filled out a name stick-on to wear, and also they filled out a cardboard name tent with their name, society, & officer position. The name tents were used during the table discussions and placed in front of each participant – to help identify them to the other table participants. The fifteen people in attendance identified themselves to the group, stating their engineering society, and their current officer position with their society.

A nice assortment of cold & hot drinks and a variety of snack foods were provided by Neal Jacques and paid for by PSEC.

The outgoing PSEC President, Don Goehler, was thanked for his excellent service this past program year along with all the other PSEC officers. Then the new PSEC officers (installed at the June, 2007 PSEC Council meeting) were all introduced.

The new PSEC President, Kelly Griswold, gave a brief overview of the planned PSEC program for the coming year and asked for volunteers to consider chairing the primary events (or participate on the event committees). A few questions about the main annual PSEC events were taken at that time.

Then the agenda for today’s ISOW event was described and placed on the white board at the front of the room (along with the planned start & end times for the discussion tables). There was enough time to only participate in any two of the three table discussions (in an interest to end the event promptly at 1 pm, as was decided by the PSEC Council earlier) – so everyone had to pick their two choices. All three table discussions were held during both of the timed sessions.

The three table facilitators were introduced, and each table had a tent sign in the middle of the table - identifying that tables’ main discussion topic.

The summary notes from each of the three table discussion topics: Education; Organization & Operations; Communications are all shown below:

Education Table

Don Goehler, ASMI

ASCE, SAMPE, WSPE- Lake Washington, ASM Intl., SWE

Programs for K-12 students:

  • ASCE has the Popsicle Stick Bridge Building contest that is run by their Young Member group with some help from college students. They are looking into a canned program called “Zoom into Engineering”. The Young Member Group goes into the High Schools to help teach engineering principles during the construction of the Bridges and structural test contest is held during the PSEC Engineers Fair at the Museum of Flight.
  • WSPE- Lake Washington -- All three local chapters, are heavily in the Math Counts program at the local competition level. There are Clubs at the various schools This is also part of a National program and competition. During their “World in Motion” participation, they found that even Third Graders can be interested in Engineering.
  • ASM Intl. has a high school level student chapter in Tacoma and in conjunction with the U of W, help financially and with speakers conduct a one week summer “Materials Camp” for High Schoolers.
  • ASM Intl. and IIE have both participated in PSEC coordinated high school Career Guidance Day events by providing speakers.

College Programs or Activities:

  • ASM Intl. The Chapter also works with Students from the U of W Materials Advantage group of the Material Science and Engineering Department. These Student Chapter Members attend our regular Meetings, man our PSEC Engineering Fair Booth, and receive an annual subsidy of $1000 and organize a Students Night where they present their current research activities and compete for a prize of $100.
  • Several local engineering societies provide Mentors to both PSEC Mentor Night events at Seattle U. & U.W.
  • SWE pointed out that the U of W is allowing Freshman to start at Engineering School rather than wait for the Junior year. They strongly support College chapters and designate specific people for “Outreach” activities.
  • ASCE conducts the National Concrete Canoe contests, which was occurring during the ISOW meeting, and the ASCE attendees had to hurry off to help.

Professional Education:

  • ASM International Education Committee focuses on Continuing Education for its Members and the Materials Community in the Puget Sound region. Every year, we conduct Seminars with subjects from “Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist”, “Aluminum Castings” to “Composite Failure Analysis”. These Seminars are conducted at locations that provide free Conference or Classrooms, and usually cost the attendees $100 to $200. At Boeing, The Ed Welles Fund For Continuing Education, has been hosting annual seminars where they internally publicize the Seminars, and the Puget Sound ASMI supplies the educational materials and Speakers, paying the Chapter $1000 to $2000 depending on attendance. These Boeing Seminars have been popular and usually completely fill up requiring second programs.All of the societies with National programs have a variety of educational opportunities offered in the form of courses, seminars, conferences, books, etc.
  • SAMPE conducts continuing education classes at the Museum of Flight. They have also used the Boeing “Flex Time” opportunities to volunteer at various professional activities.
  • SWE strongly supports continuing education activities for their members. They also participate in National Job Fairs, which get a lot of Company participation,
  • WSPE use their activities to further members abilities to organize people, handle contracts and updating their Professional Licenses. Also, they use monthly meeting to support their Professional License Continuing Education credits.
  • ASCE has organized a “Young Members” group, who meet in both Seattle and Bellevue for continuing education opportunities.

Organization and Operations Table

W. Paul Grant, P.E., ASCE

Attendance at the Organization and Operations breakout session included representatives from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). All societies had membership in the greater Puget Sound Region ranging from several hundred for SWE, 1,000 to 1,200 for ASQ and ASME, and around 2,200 for ASCE. Commonalities included:

    • Locations - McCormick & Schmick's - Seattle(ASCE), Old Spaghetti Factory - Seattle (ASME), Redmond (ASQ), Various (SWE)
    • Meal Cost - $15 (ASME); $20 (ASCE – subsidized)
    • Meeting Topics - Typically technical with SWE providing a wide range of speakers. ASQ draws speakers from a national pool. SWE has also been successful in drawing speakers from outside the area that were planning a local business trip (Boeing related).
  • - Several societies had great response offering tours (technical or otherwise) in conjunction with monthly meetings
  • - Monthly meeting attendance for the larger societies typically ranged from 40 to 80
  • - Most societies had electronic newsletters with hard copy mailings for those without internet access. Even with an electronic newsletter, ASCE reduced their mailings from 600 to 16 by sending out advance notices over a 3 month period of the exclusive distribution of the electronic only version of the newsletter unless the society received a written request for a hard copy.
    • (i.e. Officer positions and volunteers)
    • - Develop more contact with societal chapters at local universities to stress the benefits of technical development and networking at local section meetings as the next step in professional development of young engineers
    • - Because of geographic diversity, several societies, including ASCE and SWE, have established branches to engage members in different counties
    • - Several societies hold different types of events to appeal to a broader membership. Such events include:
      • - Both technical and non technical orientation
        • - Similar to Habitat for Humanity (ASCE)
        • - Ranging from group sessions of “Ask the Engineer” to a structured one on one mentoring program (ASCE)
        • - for High School students and a major draw at the Engineers Week Fair (ASCE – YMF)
        • - ASCE’s YMF recently hosted a Western Regional Conference (with the backing of the national society) which had a record attendance of such events. The YMF has also participated in similar but smaller scale events
      • - ASCE’s YMF hold regular Happy Hour meetings on the east and west sides as well as periodic pub crawls to attract participation of younger members
      • - Hold retreats or at least annual planning meetings of the section officers to discuss section goals, past successes and areas of improvement for the coming year.
    • - See speakers from local universities to discuss current research to keep members abreast of new developments and to foster better relations with universities and students
    • - Invite a co-worker to join you in attending a monthly meeting (personal invitations have a better chance of success)
    • - Seek societal support from managers of local companies to encourage employee participation with a particular emphasis that employees holding a leadership position in a society will develop skills that will be beneficial to the company or governmental agency. Also hold hosted brown bag lunches at local companies to describe societal activities and advantages of joining the society. Obtain e-mail lists of brown bag meeting participants for potential distribution to technical groups for e-mail distribution of meeting announcements.
    • - While private firms typically pick up membership and meeting costs for employees, such costs are not covered by government agencies. Reduced dinner prices at societal meetings for government employees may increase participation. Also, holding informational meetings at governmental agencies may provide new membership.

Communications Table

Steve Snelling, IIE

WSPE-Lk WA, SWE, ASCE, ASQ, SAMPE, WSPE-Mt. Rainer, ASME, IIE

Web Sites:

  • Most of the societies listed have web sites, that carry their meeting information and educational events information.
  • Some sites are very elaborate with Newsletter formatted content that is active, and replaces any mailed newsletter (for everyone with web access).
  • Some of the larger societies have separate sections for the larger divisions within their society or a young engineer section, and these are often treated as separate web sites (sometimes with their own Webmaster, newsletter editor, and events calendar).
  • All local society web sites are linked to the main PSEC web site, under the Member Societies section; some also send their event information to the PSEC Webmaster to be included in the PSEC web site’s monthly calendar (showing all societies upcoming events that are open to all engineers & students).

E-Mail Notices:

  • All of the societies represented use e-mail notices to inform their members about upcoming events and other information.
  • Some societies send out information at the beginning of the program year with the entire year’s events listed with dates & topics.
  • Several societies also regularly communicate their events to local student chapters (usually via contacts that work directly with the student chapters).
  • A few societies still use postal mailings for those members with no active e-mail address (but this is a very small portion of their memberships).
  • Several societies carry additional names on their distribution lists, beyond their dues paying members (some carry twice their dues paying membership in their expanded distribution lists).
  • Most societies use the base list of names maintained by their national organization for them; a few societies maintain their own distribution lists (due to delays from their national organization in updating new members and revisions).
  • Most societies have restrictions on who can send information to their distribution lists (usually only certain society officers); a few make it available to all their members to use for communication.
  • The size of a local society will usually determine the types of communication they utilize; some of our PSEC member societies have just under 50 members and some have several thousand local members (on their distribution lists, only a small percentage attend most events).
  • Separate officer distribution lists (e-mail addresses and work phone numbers) are maintained and used for more frequent society business communication between active chapter officers.

Newsletters:

  • Monthly newsletters are pretty common, but are mainly separate sections of the local societies’ web site content.
  • Newsletters are mainly program announcements, but some put in technical articles as well.
  • A few societies still do a postal mailing of their newsletters, but usually to only those members who request it (if they don’t have active e-mail accounts, etc.).

Other Types of Communication:

  • ASCE hosted a regional Leadership Conference that generated a number of ideas on how to communicate to and attract young engineers to volunteer for positions with the senior society.
  • Several societies have regular events with the student chapters to talk to them about joining the senior society upon graduation.
  • A few societies have their chapter officers do phone tree calling to communicate upcoming events.
  • Some society officers periodically contact their membership by phone to encourage them to attend events and discuss volunteer activities.
  • Some larger local companies, like Boeing, have formal Interest Groups that expand the distribution of some of the societies’ event information and other topics.