University of Calgary

Get Involved!

There are many benefits for joining the IEEE Student Branch and getting involved. Getting involved on campus a great way to become part of the campus community and to improve on skills that you've wanted to master. At the University of Calgary IEEE Student Branch, we want to encourage leadership, initiative and innovation, so we want you to come to us, and tell us what you want to do within the student branch. After all, if you are joining the student branch, you should have flexibility to choose your own projects and involvement opportunities.

Here at the University of Calgary IEEE Student Branch, there are multiple ways that you can get involved. More details are in the sections below.

  1. Run or help run a project or activity: Come up with your own idea for a program, design, activity or event. This project should help the understanding, implementation or creation of technology and innovation for the benefit of humanity, or help IEEE, the Schulich School of Engineering, or the student body. Some examples are listed below
  2. Join the Student Branch Executive: There are many functions that need to be accomplished within the Student Branch. Managing the volunteers, helping with marketing our branch and our events, maintaining relations with the industry are only a few examples of things that must be done.
  3. Run a Student Branch Society or Affinity Group: If you have the interest to run a Student Branch Society or affinity group, because you have a special interest in a specific topic within IEEE, such as the Power and Energy Society or Women In Engineering, this might be the right thing for you. Keep in mind, you will need to have a team of at least 4 people, and it will take some leg work to get this running.
  4. Volunteer and Participate in IEEE Activities: If you do not want to take a leadership role within the student branch, we always need volunteers for events and people that actively participate within our branch activities. We'll keep you posted if you want to do this.

To tell us what you want to do with us, just contact us!

 

Projects and Activities

Each project will need one or two leader accountable for the outcomes of the project, a team (if needed) of people helping out to ensure its success, a basic budget so that the Student Branch can know where money is coming from and where it is going, and basic activities and desired outcomes. If you are interested in starting your own project, send your plans to sb.ucalgary@ieee.org, and tell us the above information. If it is something that fits within IEEE's scope, we can put it on the website, and see if there are other people who want to hop on-board.

If you are hoping to receive any funding by the Student Branch, you need to send it in by September 27th, so we have time to ask you more questions, and fill out the appropriate forms for funding and budget.

Here are some basic project idea on how you can take a leadership role within the Student Branch. Feel free to come up with your own ideas!

  • Circuits or Programming tutoring program: Teach students interested in
    learning how to program or how to solve circuits. This may also be
    useful for first years in programming or second years in circuits.
  • Activity Organizer: Lead or join a team of people who have a mission to organize an event or activity that will engage people. Some ideas are a wind farm tour, design competitions, workshops, social nights. Whenever there's an event, we need to make sure that they are properly organized and there are
    volunteers there to make sure that everything is happening the right
    way.
  • Speaker Series Coordination: Get a bunch of people from the industry or academia to come speak about technology and innovation, and get people to show up to these to learn. 
  • Design Team: Be part of a team to design and create something
    related to electrical engineering that can be used to show off and to
    show case what people in IEEE can do.
  • Microprocessor Group (MPG): Learn how to design microprocessors and to program them to do all sorts of different things. Jason Long, a person from industry, will be coming to the University on a weekly basis to teach interested people how to do this. Learn more...
  • High School Presentations: There are many pre-made interactive modules for high school at www.tryengineering.org, and we could use someone to coordinate volunteers and school presentations (would require cooperating with the Southern Alberta Region)
  • Computer Literacy Training: Many newcomers to Canada don’t know how to use computers, and would benefit from learning how to use e-mail, internet explorer, powerpoint and other things that many of us find trivial. We can partner with Engineers Without Borders to volunteer there too!

Student Branch Executive and Council Positions

The Student Branch has to fill several function that are key to running organizations. If you are interested in making sure that we have the necessary infrastructure to succeed, this is the place for you. VP Positions are generally higher accountability and may be in charge of coordinating a team, whereas director positions are introductory leadership positions. Below are the current openings.

If you are interested in any of these, send your interested position and why you think you would best fit the role to sb.ucalgary@ieee.org by September 27th, and we'll get back to you.

  • Marketing (Director): Make sure that the events that are organized look really attractive to people and to get them show up to the event. Place IEEE in a position where people can see the full extent of the positive aspects of the organization. Posters, newsletters, other crazy schemes, you name it!
  • Membership Engagement (VP or Director): Attract, Engage and Retain new people into IEEE. Have some kind of interface to build an IEEE family. Help coordinate volunteers for events. Track membership.
  • Internship and Industry Relations (VP): Take the necessary step to foster stronger relations between the student branch and the industry for the purpose of recruiting speakers for  presentations, get a better insight of the industry, help the industry find the brightest engineering students, and for potential partnerships.
  • Fundraising (VP or Director): In charge of looking for external sources of funding such as sponsorship and grants in order to meet the financial needs of the Student Branch, and to assist the project and activity teams to raise necessary funds. 

Run a Student Branch Society or Affinity Group

Societies and Affinity Groups are composed of people with a selective interest to promote a field or a group of people. If you are interested in starting one of these, we'll need at least 4 people to make sure all the operations are complete. We've never done this, so it will be a learning experience for the both of us. 

If you are interested, send us an e-mail describing why you are interested, and how many people you've got on board. We'll put up information on the site so that other interested people can join to form the minimum team of 4.

Here is a complete list of possibilities:

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