Welcome to the June newsletter! Here at the midpoint of the year, I’d like to give an update on chapter happenings and set some goals for the remainder of the year. Of course, after the June meeting we will be 2/3s through our evening meeting slate for the year so time continues to fly.
One thing I am proud of is that we have increased our meeting attendance significantly in 2017. Our average meeting attendance is just over 23 for the first 5 meetings of the year. Over the last two years, I had watched our attendance trickle downward so I am glad to have helped reverse the trend. I am hoping that we can keep the momentum going, and I still view our sweet spot goal for meeting attendance in the mid 30s.This is important for several reasons:
- A higher meeting attendance results in a more vibrant atmosphere that encourages people to return and participate.
- A higher meeting attendance makes our chapter more attractive for potential speakers and sponsors.
- Financially, a higher meeting attendance reduces the average cost-per-person. At lower attendance rates the chapter can actually lose money on a monthly meeting.
I would like to thank you for your participation to date, and if you haven’t been out to a meeting please come out and join us. I think we’ve got some good momentum going and see it continuing if we commit to maintaining our communication efforts.
Now that our meeting attendance is on the right track, I’d like to renew focus on the following areas:
Young engineers events – involvement of the younger engineers is critical for growing our membership base.
Student Chapter engagement – primarily by reviving our scholarship program, I think the chapter needs to serve as a resource for local engineering programs. The mentoring and networking aspect should be attractive to civil engineering students and we should serve as stewards of our profession.
PDH requirements – currently, the chapter provides 9 PDHs a year through our 9 monthly meetings. I would like to increase this to make the required 15 hours available to our members on an annual basis. My thoughts on how to accomplish this?
- Coordinate two one-hour lunch and learns during the summer months. These would be vendor driven, and occur at a restaurant during the summer months. The goal would be for these to be free for our members (paid for by the sponsors)
- Coordinate one half-day seminar a year – something like this would probably include a lunch and would be provided based on interest and at an additional cost to our members. Something like this would probably be more technical in nature, and I would like to hear from you if you are interested in such an event.
At the June meeting, I’ll speak more about these efforts and hopefully have some information regarding some potential summer lunch and learns. I’m also planning to send out some brief online surveys to get your thoughts these topics.
Moving forward, we will need some additional volunteers. I’ve spoken with a few of you about volunteer opportunities and they will be available shortly. I think that with a few additional folks, we can further delegate our chapter goals and responsibilities such that these needs can be met with little individual effort.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you at the June meeting!
