New officers begin terms, globalization report endorsed, and education workshop debuts at SAM

In addition Terry Shoup taking office as ASME's new president, and Sam Zamrik being named president-nominee, a number of other events occurred at the Society's Summer Annual Meeting last month. A rundown of the meeting's key developments is listed below.

Former ASME President Harry Armen (left), who served as president of the Society in 2004–05, awards outgoing President Richard E. (Gene) Feigel with the ASME Presidential Citation at SAM. Each ASME president receives the Citation at the end of his or her term.

• Victoria A. Rockwell, Chittaranjan Sahay and Robert T. Simmons each began a three-year term as ASME Board of Governor (member-at-large).

• Walter W. Laity and Robert N. Pangborn became ASME senior vice presidents at the meeting. Laity now serves as senior vice president of the Centers Sector, while Pangborn is now senior vice president of Strategic Management Sector.

• Seven new ASME vice presidents also took office during SAM: Dilip R. Ballal (International Gas Turbine Institute); Paul D. Edwards (Conformity Assessment); Michael M. Reischman (Government Relations); Daniel J. Segalman (Technical Communities); Stan J. Simpson (Safety Codes and Standards); Robert O. Warrington (Education); and John W. Wesner (Programs and Activities).

• The Nominating Committee selected Frank C. Adamek, Donald R. Frikken and Marc W. Goldsmith as the newest members-at-large of the Society's Board of Governors. Their three-year terms will begin at the 2007 Summer Annual Meeting.

• The Nominating Committee named five vice presidents to take office at next year's SAM: Candace Bauer (Professional Development, Practice and Ethics); Larry Kielasa (Financial Operations); Joseph W. Milton (Standardization and Testing); Vincent Wilczynski (Public Awareness); and Justin R. Young (Affinity Communities). Each vice president will serve for three years.

• At its June 18 meeting, the Board of Governors received the Global Project Team's "Report on the Strategic Initiative on Globalization" and voted to endorse the plan as presented. Recommended strategies presented in report address enhancing ASME's product and service portfolio, building upon and leveraging codes and standards as ASME's global brand leader, developing a comprehensive global marketing and sales strategy, increasing global participation in ASME, and improving delivery systems for ASME products and services.

• The ASME Foundation Board of Directors voted to award $232,500 in ASME Foundation Grants for calendar year 2007 — the largest amount ever awarded by the Foundation in a single year. Sectors are encouraged to submit proposals no later than August 25 and use the guidelines available in ASME Society Policy P-2.11. Projects eligible for financial support from the ASME Foundation include, but are not limited to, three program areas: technical literacy, career planning and skills development, and technologically sound public policy. Contact Warren Leonard, leonardw@asme.org, for more information.

• The ASME Foundation Board of Directors approved a three-year development plan and budget focusing on five areas: planned giving services, growing endowments, an annual campaign, the ASME Foundation Grants Program, and a special Federal Fellowship fundraising plan to raise both operational and endowment support for the this ASME program.

• The leadership of the Centers and Knowledge and Community Sectors met during SAM to discuss joint activities. Three areas of specific interest were discussed: a network of volunteers to serve student sections; the development of university communities to bring together academic department heads, student section advisors, student section leaders and others in the university environment, and the organization and administration of student conferences. A task force led by Candace Bauer, vice president nominee for Professional Development Practice and Ethics, is developing guidelines for conducting student conferences. These conferences traditionally have focused on ASME competitions. The goal of the task force is to broaden the meetings to attract more students, particularly those not involved in the competitions. This is reflected in the new name for these student meetings - Student Professional Development Conferences.

• Volunteers and staff from the Center for Leadership and Diversity met in various locations during SAM to discuss and move forward their work. Highlights included the successful kickoff of the ECLIPSE (Early Career Leadership Intern Program to Serve Engineering) program, strategic diversity presentations to all Sector Boards and the Board of Governors, and the unveiling of the VOLT (volunteer training) Academy's ambitious slate of goals for the coming year. (See related stories, "Early career leadership opportunities 'ECLIPSE' former programs" and "VOLT Academy moves into high gear," also in this issue.)

• The workshop "Inspiring Innovation: Engineering Education in the Classroom," was held on June 20. The program, which was sponsored through a grant from the United Engineering Foundation, drew nearly 70 participants from the San Francisco area — including university students, teachers and members of the workshops sponsoring societies ASME, IEEE, AIChE and ASCE. Workshop presenters included Doug Gorham and Alison Ickowicz, from IEEE, along with Bill Nott and Vince Wilczynski, from the ASME Pre-College Committee, and ASME staff member Marina Stenos.

Senior vice president for Centers, Walt Laity (right), took part in some of the hands-on activities at the "Inspiring Innovation" workshop.

"This workshop allowed us to bring hands-on resources to local engineers and educators in a fun and dynamic environment," said Wilczynski, who is also chair of the Pre-College Committee as well as the incoming vice president for the Center for Public Awareness. "Inspiring the next generation of engineering innovators and inventors is key to ensuring competitiveness and success."

At the workshop, teachers and engineers worked together to bring engineering projects into the classroom.

Participants at the workshop had the opportunity to do three hands-on activities. One of these focused on creating a "flinker," a device that neither floats nor sinks — but rather flinks. The other two activities were mainly focused on design challenges: constructing a water wheel and a robotic arm. Based on survey feedback results those who participated in these hands on activities found them to be incredibly useful and, more importantly, fun, according to workshop presenter Marina Stenos.

A student talks about the robot arm he designed during one of the workshop's design challenges.

"It's important to engage young people to use their creativity in the classroom," added Bill Nott, who led the water wheel activity. "Learning can't just be about memorizing and repeating data, it needs to involve all the senses and encourage collaboration and trial-and-error."

More workshops are planned for other ASCE and IEEE events around the United States. For a copy of the slide presentation from the event or to reach out to other ASME members interested in pre-college outreach activities, check out the Pre-College Community of Practice, http://cop.asme.org/COP/PreCollegeEducationK12/.

— Compiled by Ben Bahner

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