Blacksburg, Va., Oct. 17, 2007 —— If a student organization were allowed to become a member of the Ut Prosim Society at Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech's Student Engineers' Council (SEC) would be well on its way to becoming a member at the level of the President's Inner Circle, comprised of the donors who surpass the $1 million mark.
In the past eight years, the SEC has contributed more than $400,000 in support of the College of Engineering's undergraduate programs. In addition, it supports three endowed scholarships, and has returned tens of thousands of dollars to individual engineering student societies to support travel to conferences, hosting of national meetings, and inventory for design projects.
The College of Engineering recently recognized the SEC for a gift it made several years ago to make technology upgrades to engineering classrooms. The renovation project of room 209, Randolph Hall was completed in the spring of 2007.
Tom Walker, associate professor of engineering education (EngEd), in collaboration with Glenda Scales, associate dean of engineering for distance learning and computing, and Hayden Griffin, head of the EngEd department, submitted the classroom renovation project idea. The SEC favored this idea because the university committed to provide matching funds for the upgrades.
When the SEC solicits proposals from college faculty such as the one Scales introduced, it bases its award, in part, on the impact a project might have on the largest number of engineering students. With Scales' ability to secure matching funding, bringing the total earmarked for classroom renovation closer to $100,000, the SEC felt the impact on the college's students would be substantial.
Assisting the college with the project was the Learning Technologies Group on campus and its Director of Administration Tom Head.
Other SEC funded projects in the past few years include enhancements to the Ware Lab which hosts numerous engineering design teams, the College of Engineering's Student Assistance Center, the Frith Freshman Design Engineering Lab, the Freshman Engineering Program, and the renovation of a different popular engineering classroom.
In addition, in 2007, the SEC announced the creation of a new $105,000 endowment to support the nationally and internationally acclaimed engineering student design teams in the college. The SEC's goal is have this endowment reach $500,000 by 2010. The SEC's goal is to add to this account each year to become a dependable source of revenue for the design teams.
In August, The Boeing Company increased the size of this endowment with a gift of $50,000 from its Global Corporate Citizenship (GCC) disaster relief team budget.. The donation was made as a way to help Virginia Tech students and honor those killed on the Virginia Tech campus of April 16.
In 2006 the National Association of Engineering Student Councils (NAESC) named Virginia Tech's SEC the most philanthropic organization of its kind in the nation for the second time in five years.
Each year the SEC requests proposals from members of the College of Engineering community that identify ways in which money may best be spent for the improvement of the college. Generally, engineering faculty members submit these proposals and an executive review committee narrows the number of proposals to three to five. The authors then present their proposals to the larger SEC assembly, which makes the final decisions on how to allocate the resources.
The SEC earns the money it donates to the college by hosting the Engineering Expo career fair each year. In 1980, approximately 40 companies attended the Career Fair; today some 260 companies participate. Virginia Tech's Engineering Expo is one of the most successful career fairs in the country.