Santa Clara Valley Leadership Training

Here’s the view outside of my window:

I’m currently headed to San Jose to attend the 2015 Santa Clara Valley (SCV) IEEE leadership training session with my current Vice-Chair Michele! Now, this isn’t a student specific event. After some talking however, John Borland, the Hawaii Section Chair, was able to get enough funding for the UH Manoa IEEE Student Branch to send two whole students!

Kate Jenkins suggested that this event might be a great venue to connect student branch members to IEEE professionals. If you don’t know, IEEE has a bit of an issue actually keeping members after they graduate from their respective Universities and stop being IEEE Student Members. She said that perhaps one of the reasons this is occurring across the board is because there aren’t that many opportunities for students to link up with IEEE professionals.

I definitely see the benefit of being an IEEE Student member, especially as an active member of the student branch. For around 30 bucks a year, the membership is practically a steal, and I feel like the upper leadership, particularly in Region 6 has been very friendly and supportive so far.

We’ll see what new experience this trip brings me that I can take back home to the Student Branch!