AEE Cascades University Student Chapter Activities for 2017-2018 Academic Year

Our first activity was to have Carrie Cabak from Garmin in Salem, OR come talk to the Cascades Chapter about the transition from student to working engineer. This was a riveting talk that she structured around student interests. Our chapter hosted a sweater sale to raise additional funds for students attending the 2018 EMC in Seattle. These sweaters have the new school logo and “Energy Systems Engineering” on them, and it was a hit!

In November, the chapter put on its very first facility tour, something we aimed to add to the list of activities in order to better serve the members. On this tour, we went to the Deschutes Brewery and received a tailored engineering tour of the facility. Below is a picture of the group with our new banner! That wrapped up our fall term and we spent the next month (December) planning the events for winter term. We decided to make our winter term activities alumni-centric so the members can get a feel for what other energy systems engineering graduates are doing.

Our first winter event was to have a couple of alumni from Rosendin Electric give a presentation on the projects they are managing in Central Oregon. Shown in the picture is Levi Gagnon and Jaxson Landrus.

The second event continued our commitment to host facility tours, which brought us to a local overland vehicle company called EarthCruiser. Here, many of the program’s graduates (and some current students) are hired as engineers to continuously improve their processes and their products. We even got to tour the inside of one of their trucks!

Our final event for the winter was to have another guest speaker and alum from ColeBreit, Michael Leavitt, talk about the energy projects he has been involved with. He gave us great engineer-life tips and shared lessons he wished he would have learned before graduating.

Lastly, there’s a freebie photo in the mix. Whenever we have guest speakers, the AEE Cascades Chapter likes to welcome both members and nonmembers to a hosted lunch.

We look forward to our events this spring term, which include a facility tour of OIT’s M.S. in Renewable Energy Engineering program and labs in Wilsonville, OR, board member elections, and the EMC in Seattle in June.