Happy New Year to you all! Hope you are off to a great start in 2019. I know that some of our family members, friends, and colleagues are affected by the almost month-long partial Government shutdown.
While the government in Washington seems broken and not getting things done that they are supposed to, ACEC Sierra chapter has been working behind the scene to bring you some exciting events. We had our traditional joint meeting with APWA in January where Assemblyman Kevin Kiley was the guest speaker. The meeting was a great success mostly due to the hard work by Marco Palilla. Thank You Marco! If you missed the meeting, you can read about it in this newsletter. Past President’s Dinner Meeting is planned on February 20 where we honor those who have served our Chapter in the past. This event will also feature Tim Fleming Memorial Scholarship Award Ceremony. ACEC Sierra Chapter has been supporting the Tim Fleming Scholarship funds in the past. I hope we continue to do so in the future to honor Tim’s legacy and to support well-deserving engineering students in our area. A big thank you note to Marco again for championing this event.
On March 20, we will have a joint meeting with Cal Mentor. We are planning to have a panel of local transportation agencies to discuss about utilization of SB1 funding in local projects and the benefits to our communities. You know that the efforts to repeal SB1 has been defeated in the last election in November. This will be an exciting and informative event. Please keep an eye on future announcements. Our April meeting will feature Young Professional Forum. The objective of the event is to get engineers and land surveyors of the next generation involved in ACEC and be ready to take leadership roles. So, please bring a young professional from your organization to our April meeting and show them the ACEC way.
I mentioned our chapter’s First Agency Excellence Awards Event in our last three newsletters, and will keep mentioning until the event is over. We are excited and little nervous at the same time, as this will be an event of its first kind. The event is planned for June 5 which seems far away now, but it is never too early to prepare. This is my request to all Sierra Chapter members – think of your favorite public agency that you enjoy working with, think why you enjoy working with them, and submit your nomination. The deadline to submit your nomination is March 15, 2019. We will need your help to make this event successful.
In my mind, one of the important functions of the chapter is to promote and support the next generation of engineers and land surveyors. We primarily do this through scholarships and donations to various organizations and events from our limited working budget. Of course, a larger pool of money will allow us to contribute in a larger scale. Some local chapters of other organizations (APWA, SAME) have excellent fund-raising events. We should have one of our own to help us contribute this worthy cause. If you have a fund-raising idea, please feel free to contact me or any of our board members.
See you all on February 20th at our next meeting!
Debanik Chaudhuri
Sierra Chapter President
2018-2019
