Welcome to the February issue of the ACEC Sierra Chapter Newsletter. We are halfway through our 2017/2018 meeting season and I’m excited about how we are going to finish out the year.

Our chapter meeting in February will be our Past Presidents Dinner, where we will learn about the new Amazon facility being built in our region. March will be our joint meeting with Calmentor.

In April and May we are going to explore two new meeting ideas. The April Meeting will be an awards dinner focused on recognition of public agencies across California that are great clients of our member firms. We will recognize agencies for exemplary efforts in qualifications based selection, contracting out, monument preservation, and innovative infrastructure design. Our May Meeting will be a panel discussion focused on providing career advice to young professionals. We will be making a special effort to invite young engineers and land surveyors to this May Meeting.

Our chapter board has also been working on a few ideas. We are trying to come up with a strategy for our funding of non-profits and scholarships. Kathy has been doing a great job in efforts to engage our chapter members, a job that I neglected as vice president. I encourage you to cooperate with her efforts and to respond to any invitations you get from her or our other board members that are working with her. Kathy and Debanik are also spearheading the idea of a fundraising component to our September Meeting this year, so we can more fully support scholarships and other non-profit funding requests. Please contact me if you are interested in helping judge our public agency awards for the April Meeting or if you can serve on our panel for young professionals at the May Meeting.

Landon Blake