engineering banquet

wednesday april 16, 2008 was the engineering banquet (i know thats a while ago, but i didn't get around to writing this post. better late than never). even though i'm an ICS alumni, i'm lucky enough to be able to attend this great event for the past three years because my company sponsors a table. this years banquet was quite special, because it is the college's centennial year! a 100 years of educating hawaii's students.

this year's banquet was quite impressive. there were over a 100 tables of 10 people; for you mathematicians out there, yes that is over a thousand people. one thousand people supporting and celebrating the college. it was awesome to see that many people that cared about the college. even the guest speakers were quite informative and entertaining. they were all associated with the college either alumni or worked closely with the department. one thing that was striking was that it was really obvious the guest speakers had a lot of aloha for their college, professors, and students. they had a lot of pride and appreciation for the college. i thought that was really great.

The College put together a great book celebrating the last 100 years of engineering education. i want to highlight this paragraph:

A strength of the College has traditionally been the wide range of activities offered to the student body. There are numerous open houses, career days when companies come to recruit, and competitions. Many students have lasting memories of competing in the concrete canoe, micro-mouse, human powered vehicle, mini-Baja, Formula SAE, and nano-satellite projects. Open houses and school visits acquaint high school students with College of Engineering opportunities. Some 1,000 alumni maintain ties with the College by attending the annual banquet.

engineering students sure do have a lot of opportunities. and i think it actually pays off. i've talked to a lot of engineering students in interviews and career days, and its obvious that the students gain a lot of very valuable experience. and these projects are real and competitive within the college and more importantly competitive against other students from the mainland. those skills are really noticeable in conversation and in interviews. the college's hard work is definitely paying off.

as i was sitting in the banquet my engineering friends turned to me and said, what about your department (referring to the ICS department). i explained well ICS is a lot newer and smaller. i told them that we had our first alumni lunch this year and i don't think we have an alumni association. ICS had its 40th anniversary and COE had its 100th. ICS is a department and COE is a college. i silenced the table for a little bit, but then an engineer rebutted, "the college of engineering didn't have these cool opportunities when i was in school. all of this, these competitions, student groups, etc are all relatively new. so what is the difference between the two?" hm... i didn't know how to respond to that. i don't know what the difference is. maybe instead of supporting five competitions, maybe the ics department can just support one; or one every two years. i don't know... anyway, enough about that...

back to the engineering banquet. this year's banquet was pretty awesome. actually, its pretty inspiring. i think thats why i like to go every year. the only thing that the college of engineering needs to work on is the singing of hawaii aloha. ever year they close the event with that and every year it seems like on a small percentage actually knows the song. i just find that to be funny...