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President’s Message – November 2012

Howdy!! I am very excited to begin serving the Dallas Branch as your Branch President for 2012-2013.  We have assembled an excellent group of officers and committee chairs who are volunteering to lead our organization for the next year.  One of the major goals for next year includes promoting and involving our members with the Centennial Celebration.  The 100th anniversary of ASCE Texas is being marketed as a yearlong, statewide celebration.  One of the largest events for the Centennial Celebration will occur in our branch next September 11-14 when we host the Fall 2013 Texas Section Conference.  This will be the biggest event that the Texas Section has ever put on, and a lot of work is currently underway with the planning of this conference by the local host committee.  Please be sure to let the host committee co-chairs (Angela Matthews, Quinn Spann, Kristin Green or Mark Boyd) know if you have any ideas or would like to help out with hosting this conference.  I’m sure they can use all the help they can get since they are planning to have over 1,000 people attend the conference.  More info on Centennial Celebration events will be coming soon.

 

We also plan to continue with great luncheon speakers and technical seminars starting with Timothy McKay, P.E. from DART who will speak with us regarding the TIGER Project.  The technical session following the November luncheon will feature a career development presentation by Anthony Fasano, P.E.   There is a nominal charge of $15 to attendees to cover expenses and to provide each attendee with a copy of Mr. Fasano’s book, “Engineering Your Own Success - 7 Key Elements to Creating and Extraordinary Engineering Career.”  This will also be a joint meeting with the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME)and will be held on Veterans Day.  Come ready to say thanks to those who have served our great country.

The Education Committee is already hard at work with Matt Ludwig committed to provide programs to a number of schools and organizations.  We are also looking for engineers to help mentor junior high school students for the North Texas Region Future City Competition.  Participation in these types of events is very rewarding and it allows you to share your own experiences. You never know, you may influence a young mind to become a civil engineer in the future.

The Communication Committee will be introducing social media to our members in the very near future.  Marc Sandhu is working on creating a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a Linked-In account for the Dallas Branch. That is on top of the You Tube page we already have. Communications is just one area we are seeking to enhance during the next year in order to better serve our members and to create more benefit in becoming a Dallas Branch member.