March-April
Message
My
last two messages have focused on what the District is doing to try and attract
more students to the field of transportation engineering. This topic was the subject
of considerable discussion at the Mid-year Board meeting (see also the Meeting
Highlights.) Because the lack of an adequate number of students entering our field
may be the single most important challenge we face, this continues to be one of
our primary focuses in District 6. Consequently, we spent a substantial amount
of time during the Board meeting dealing with Student Chapter and Initiatives
issues. During the meeting it was my honor to
ceremonially sign UCLA's Student Chapter Charter after approved by the Board.
Their first Student Chapter President, Alicia Kinoshita, gave a presentation on
the key activities her chapter has participated in this past year. She was joined
by Student Advisor Eric Shen, who, along with District Administrator Jenny Grote
and Endowment Fund Chair Pat Gibson, have been assisting the students with the
paperwork necessary to make it all official. Technical
Committee Chair Karen Aspelin reported on the Data Collection projects being performed
by Student Chapters during the 2006/2007 school year. Student Chapters from Brigham
Young University, Portland State University, University of Nevada - Reno, and
the University of Washington and are completing projects to collect trip and parking
generation data for various land uses including small offices, multiplex theaters,
drive-through coffee stores, and transit-oriented development. The University
of Hawaii - Manoa Student Chapter is preparing a calibration of capacity parameters
for signalized intersections. The students receive a stipend for their work, but
more importantly, they benefit from first-hand experience collecting and evaluating
the data, and learn how important such work is. The data from past projects can
be found on our website at http://www.westernite.org/datacollectionfund/data_collection.htm. Growing
the Endowment Fund was also a topic of lively conversation. The initial goal for
the fund is $300,000, though an ultimate balance of $500,000 is desired so that
we can double the amount of funding allocated for Student Initiatives, which is
currently set at about $20,000 per year. The balance of around $12,800 took an
immediate jump when the Board voted to transfer $20,000 from the District's general
funds into the Endowment Account. This money represents the proceeds from the
Honolulu meeting in excess of expenses, and is attributable to the tremendous
turn-out for this great meeting. Endowment Fund Chair Pat Gibson was tasked with
developing a program for raising the funds. Some of the ways that could be accomplished
are through multi-year commitments for donations, contests, Section and Chapter
contributions, corporate sponsors, and even a booth at the Annual Meeting. Over
the next few months you'll likely hear more about this program through the WesternITE
as well as your Section and Chapter newsletters. We'll be posting information
on the website to show how we're doing against that goal of $500,000, and contributors
will be recognized during the Portland meeting. It would be great if we could
hit the $100,000 mark in 2007, and I challenge each member to make even a small
contribution to help us achieve that goal.
Students will be pleased to
learn that their voices are heard. A suggestions was offered by our 2006 Student
Paper Award winner, Ivana Vladisavljevic (who also won the award at the International
level) to have a student lounge at our Annual Meetings, something she saw at a
conference of another organization. Her message was forwarded to the Portland
LAC, and they're making this a reality. The "student lounge" will provide
a relaxed area where students can hang out not only with other students, but also
with prospective employers. Though exhausted at the end
of an 8-hour meeting, I was also exhilarated by the progress we'd made in terms
of actions completed and plans laid for the next five months. The tremendous amount
of dedicated volunteer time and energy that went into this meeting was truly impressive.
The package of written agenda reports and supporting documents contained a total
of 215 pages! If you want to learn what's going on in ITE, come to a Board meeting
- it's a quick way to catch up on all kinds of topics in short order! When we
meet again in Portland, I hope to cross some more tasks off our collective list,
while simultaneously adding new issues to be addressed during the following year.
If you have ideas or problems that this Board can address, I hope you'll let me
know because we are here to serve.
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