Chennai Student Congress 08’

The IEEE Victorian Chapter sponsored the RISB chair Fleur Stephens (me) to attend the the Region 10, Chennai Student Congress 08’. The Congress was held in Chennai India at the SSN University campus on January 27-30th, 2008.

Over 300 students representatives from NZ, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Dehli, Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia, Sri Lanka, Spain, America, Hyderabad, Kerala and Bombay, attended the congress. The student congress offered a great opportunity for representatives from student branches in Region 10 to network, motivate inspire and improve there ieee.

The Official IEEE representation was most impressive, Lewis Terman IEEE 2008 President ,John Vig IEEE 2008 Elected President, Janina Mazierska Region 10 director, Dr Karen Panetta IEEE Fellow, WIE Committee chair and WIE magazine Editor in chief, to name just a few, particpated in many of the official student events.

John Vig offered an insight into new initiatives in IEEE with a focus on pursuits in global sustainable projects and the ability for engineers to make a difference and improve global circumstances.
From these initiatives many new opportunities have arisen. An example of this is the IEEE Presidents’ Change the World Competition; a contest designed to recognize students who identify a real-world problem, apply engineering, science, computing and leadership skills to solve it, and, thereby, benefit humanity or their community.

The congress agenda offered highly motivational leadership training provided by Jaya Indiresan. Richard Gowen gave an enlightening speech on the IEEE Foundation. Cecelia Jankowski further enlightened students by introducing the members of the piscataway headquarters in the form of a power point presenatation.

Students were asked to offer there thoughts on ways to improve the ieee, many felt that the years membership was to expensive and requested the ability to make half year payments. Due to the students concerns student ieee billing has changed to allow this.

Several student branch chairs gave presentations listing student activities, branch organisation, management models and future goals. From this the RMIT IEEE Student Branch has gained a refreshed perspective on events, recruitment and the committee structure.

One student committee recruits only first and second year students, this results in a team that gains years worth of experience prior to managing the committee. They have some rather unusual systems in place, to explain further a yr 3 student shadows the yr 4 chair for a year before being handed the role of chair, this ensures chairs always know what the job entails and can always improve on previous methods.

As a consequence I would like to focus on gaining the involvement of undergraduate students whilst ensuring the committee still has a strong number of postgraduate students.
Admittedly I am not that keen on the concept of a shadow, maybe I am just a grump!

Many foreign student branches have a very different hierachy in place, students are given very little responsibility and most of their events and paperwork is organised by staff at their respective universities. I am sure RMIT university is thankful this is not how we have structured our committee.
The importance of handing down information between committee members was once again re-iterated by committees that inherited a committee with little information in regards to previous years. All accountants and treasurers know that this can be a nightmare.

The event concluded with a gift giving ceremony and excursion to the Mahabaliparam temples.

I must admit though possibly not the most appropriate point to make, my patriotism to both my committee, the Victorian section of IEEE and RMIT has been renewed. This will and has ensured that I work even harder to provide the best possible student branch I can concieve of and the best events my team can dream up.

I am thankful to be granted with the responsibility of my committee, I am thankful, that though my committee members are few in numbers they are spirited, enthusiastic and hard working.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the IEEE Victorian Section for providing me with such an awesome opportunity and experience.

Fleur Stephens
R.I.S.C Chairperson '08