Eric Lew - Fall 2006

I had the honor of serving as president of Tau Beta Pi during the fall of 2006, one of TBP's most active semesters ever. Probably the most impressive semester statistic was the initiation of nearly 70 new members,the largest candidate class that anyone currently involved in TBP can remember. So much happened throughout the semester that there's no-way I can describe it all. However, I've summarized some things that stood out to me: During the summer of 2006, an alert Paul Monasterio noticed (to his horror) that all the student society stuff that had been in 220 Bechtel (the engineering student group office for the past may semesters) had been moved down stairs to Bridges lounge! At first we were very unhappy about the change, in particular because we were not notified of it, but eventually we found that Bridges actually had many advantages over 220. For the first time, TBP had an area that any officer could access with a key code (previously only 3 officers had access to 220). As more and more officers began hanging out and studying in Bridges, it became the de facto TBP office. This was a major step forward in increasing officer bonding, which remained high throughout the semester.

For the first few weeks of the semester, we played a game of assassin with the officer corps. It was a lot of fun and wrapped up before the candidate semester began. Overall it was another opportunity for officers to bond with each other.

In preparation for the candidate semester, Grace Wu, Emmanuel Cua, and Nuttawan Supapong put on the best publicity campaign (in my opinion as a former publicity chair) TBP has ever seen, involving fantastic fliers and artistic chalk-board notifications. This campaign played a pivotal role in the high candidate turn-out that semester. The publicity committee also worked very hard on the publicity of the TBP career fair that fall, and came up with an exceedingly stylish career fair flier.

Throughout the semester co-vice presidents Frances Chiu and Nick Hwang both performed an amazing job keeping track of all 70 candidates. It was a major challenge managing such an unusually large class, but with their dedication and the assistance of the officer corp, the candidate semester went smoothly.

The industrial relations committee was also very busy during the Fall of 2006. Fenelia Kosasih, Lei Huang, and Patricia Wang put on the third and last Tau Beta Pi Engineering and Sciences Career Fair, generating a large amount of funding for the chapter, as well as increasing TBP's campus awareness. Although the fair was monetarily and organizationally a success, student turn-out was disappointing. After some analysis, we decided that the large number of career fairs during the Fall at Cal diluted student attendance. Further, we realized that the benefits of the career fair, although they were significant, simply could not justify enormous effort required of the industrial relations committee. Lastly, an analysis of TBP's finances (by treasurer Cory Laws) indicated that the money earned from the fair was in excess of what the chapter needed to run successfully. With these things in mind, we made the difficult decision to discontinue the TBP career fair.

Overall Fall 2006 was an extremely active and enjoyable semester for TBP. Although I have only mentioned a few names here, nearly every officer participated in and contributed to the success of the semester. It was humbling and challenging to lead such a talented and dedicated group of engineers, and it's an experience I will never forget. Thank you TBP!