The Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers National Conference was held from October 13th - October 15th in Schaumburg, Illinois. The national conference was a professional event that consisted of various workshops covering topics from leadership to technical skills such as programming. The last day of the conference consisted of a career fair with over 70 attending companies as well as a Hackathon.
One of the most meaningful things that we gained from the conference was the insight gained from talking with other chapters. As a president, I am struggling with trying to bring SASE to be better than it has been compared to past years. It was very uplifting to hear about what other successful chapters have been doing to promote SASE on their campus as well as retain membership and commitment to SASE.
The benefits that I gained from attending the national conference was newfound leadership skills. These leadership skills consisted of understanding how I am as a leader and how the other officers leadership style was compared to mine. This helped me to better understand how to work with my officer team in order to ensure that all of our style’s high points complimented each other instead of working against one another. From other officer teams, I also learned how to better keep an engaged SASE community, by getting new ideas for social events that pertain to the Asian culture.
Our national conference is very early in the year, so if one would like to attend, then they should begin preparing as soon as the academic year ends. This way, funds can be planned and covered and resumes can be submitted to be reviewed by the companies at the career fair. National conference is a great opportunity to learn about the how would it be like an engineer as an Asian and meet many students and professionals that might be your new friends.
Nagisa Her is the SASE CU Chapter president.