Student ProjectsEngineering Week
Project Manager
Claire Shen, McCormick Student Advisory Board
Amount Requested
$5,000
Summary
The McCormick Student Advisory Board (MSAB) is a diverse group of undergraduate engineering students dedicated to representing the McCormick student body, identifying the needs of students, and working with the administration to unify the McCormick community and improve the McCormick experience.
By the end of every academic school year, McCormick undergraduate students have overcome many challenges and achieved many goals. To celebrate this, Engineering Week is dedicated to allowing students to relax but also explore, learn about, and embrace what other student groups have been up to.
We plan and execute Engineering Week (E-Week for short), which comprises multiple free events every day of the week open to all undergraduates. As MSAB, we host the E-Week kickoff event to get everyone excited, a relaxation event later in the week for students to take a break and get some free food alongside other fun activities (some examples of this from previous years include therapy animals and beach volleyball), and a student group showcase. The other events are held through collaborations with other registered McCormick student groups. These diverse sets of events were put on as project demonstrations, mental health break activities, and speaker events through NU professors. Through a network of coordination, E-Week provides a cohesive set of events for maximum turnout and allows bonding and connection across different groups and majors.
We have a theme every year to encourage involvement. Last year, it was the E-Week Olympics (E-lympics), where we focused on game-like activities, which were a good way to get students’ minds off stress. We managed to beat the record set by the previous year, with 24 events held throughout the week.
Planned Activities/Investments
Kickoff Event: At our kickoff event on Monday morning of E-Week, we give out custom-designed T-shirts matching our theme for the year, stickers, and goodie bags or snacks. This is to get people excited about E-week and to reveal the full event schedule. Distributing shirts and stickers branded with E-Week and engineering logos helps build a bond and a sense of community within the McCormick student body. The food or goodie bags are our way of showing appreciation and giving the undergraduates a mental break. We also display our banner at the Tech lobby, allowing easy access to the schedule.
MSAB Relaxation Event: Later in the week, we hold an event to relieve stress for undergraduates in the form of a quick break with food and fun. This keeps the students engaged with E-Week and provides a relaxing environment. We make this event fun and different every year, for students to bond with each other as well as feel supported through the stressful time around finals.
MSAB Student Group Showcase: The student group showcase is held to give McCormick student groups the opportunity to present and demonstrate their projects all in one place. We normally have around 10-15 groups attend, ranging from the Biomedical Engineering Society to racecar teams. Many student groups never get the chance to show their projects and the progress they’ve made throughout the year, and the showcase is a chance to highlight the achievements that the McCormick student groups have worked hard on. We provide snacks at this event to encourage participation from both the groups showcasing themselves for two hours, and other engineering students to attend and find new groups to join.
McCormick Student Group Collaborative Events: We give McCormick student groups the freedom to decide the events they would like to hold, and we help them with funding and promotion. This helps fill the E-Week schedule with a variety of events to portray the diversity of McCormick engineering.
Impact
Our project impacts the entire McCormick community of over 1,600 undergraduates, as we welcome all engineering students to attend our events and provide them with fun events and stress-relieving goodies. We will evaluate the impact of our project by measuring the number of t-shirts and items we give out (200 t-shirts and 250 cookies, and 100 cookies given out this past year), as well as the number of events hosted by all McCormick organizations (24 hosted this past year).
Deliverables
The major deliverables for the project include a custom-designed banner that we hang up in the Technological Institute showcasing all of the events, as well as custom-designed T-shirts and stickers that fit the theme MSAB decides upon. Further, MSAB delivers extensive communication to McCormick organization leaders about the week to encourage them to host events and promote the engineering community, as well as flyers leading up to E-Week highlighting the events to spread awareness to all engineering students.
Sustainability
Another responsibility of MSAB is to review MSAB grant proposals that McCormick student groups apply for when needing funding for projects, conferences, or events; therefore, funding would be accessible to us as a group if needed. However, we would like to keep major MSAB funding available for student groups to use for their own projects, as it is open to apply to for most of the year. Since E-Week is also held in May, toward the end of the academic and fiscal year, the MSAB grant fund tends to be low. Given these circumstances, we believe it to be more ideal to set aside the amount of money requested in this application through the Murphy Society funding.
Previous Projects
With the gracious funding of the Murphy Society, we were proud to host 24 events across all engineering organizations throughout last year’s E-Week, breaking our record of 22 events from the previous year. We were also able to distribute many goodies to engineering students throughout the week.
Budget Overview
- T-shirts: $3,150 - Provide students with E-Week apparel they can wear for years to come.
- Stickers: $200 - Increase awareness and provide students with a memento they can stick anywhere.
- Banner: $100 - Promote all events of the week in the Technological Institute, where the majority of McCormick students have classes.
- Food and snacks: $1,500 - Encourage participation at different events with meals and sweet treats.
- Tables: $300 - Enable engineering groups to show their tri-folds and other items at the showcase, equip MSAB to hand out stickers and snacks.
Total Budget Amount: $5,250
Matching Funds
MSAB expects to receive about $1,500 from the McCormick Student Activities Fund.
Faculty Adviser/Department
Vanessa Magallanes/MCC Student Experience