Many people in the Vancouver Section have wondered why the SFU student branch (SB) became dormant in the last couple of years, to a point when the student branch website disappeared, and the student executives were nowhere to be found. Not too long ago, as our branch counselor Dr. Glenn Chapman recalled, SFU SB was one of the most active branches in western Canada, and it had collected many awards. Indeed it was true. In the mid-90s, SFU SB was awarded the best Student Branch Award. During the heyday, SFU’s IEEE student members even competed in various competitions, and collected many individual awards, and made the School of Engineering Science at SFU very proud.

So what happened in the last couple of years? Why was there a discontinuity between student executives and the rest of the world? None of the current executives knew because it was far before our time, but Dr. Chapman offered the following explanation. SFU is unique compared to other universities because of the tri-mester system, and students would go for a 4-month, or 8-month, or sometimes a 12-month co-op if a good opportunity arose. Therefore, an executive could be away from campus for a year without properly having a successor to take on the role. As a result, meetings were not held, and the branch became eventually disfunctional.

It was not until mid-2007 when I browsed through the IEEE Vancouver Section website and noticed about IEEE Student Branches. I thought to myself, this is such a great opportunity to become a volunteer for the SB, meet other students, establish better relationship with faculty, and network with IEEE professionals. So I decided to find out more from my local SB. Unfortunately,  communication broke down, until Dr. Ljiljana Trajkovic stepped in and helped us set up a meeting to get things started once again. And from that point on, the SB was revived. The SFU SB is now once again active. With the energy and efforts provided by our grad and undergrad students, we are now rolling out some exciting activities for our student body. We hold regular meetings, and we send representatives to attend Section meetings. We volunteer at local IEEE-sponsored events, connecting with other SBs, and most importantly, we are growing our membership base. We feel that 2010 will be a year when we become prominent again!

SFU IEEE Student Branch Chair,
Duncan Chan dchana at sfu.ca