June 2023 President's Report
By Ronald K. Burns, PE, LSP, LEED AP, Principal Engineer, Arcadia Technology, Inc. and BSCES President
Posted
in
President's Report
June 30th marked the end of my year as BSCES president. The year went by quickly. It was a great pleasure to work with my fellow volunteer leaders and The Engineering Center Education Trust (TECET) staff to continue to serve our members and community.
June 30th marked the end of my year as BSCES president. The year went by quickly. It was a great pleasure to work with my fellow volunteer leaders and The Engineering Center Education Trust (TECET) staff to continue to serve our members and community.During the past fiscal year, I and the rest of the Board of Government were able to accomplish the following:
♦ Hosted 36 events providing our members with practical knowledge, technical skills, and social/networking opportunities to aid their professional growth. We worked on returning to live events for members with 22 in-person and hybrid events this past fiscal year.
♦ Reorganized our annual budget development process, so that it could be completed in a timelier manner.
♦ Reorganized our Institute Chapter & Technical Group Chairs Committee to centralize event planning and to make things more efficient and less burdensome for our chairs and groups.
♦ Increased outreach to our student chapters to help engage and support them. This included our first post-COVID, in-person Student Night.
♦ Started the process of revitalizing our Legislative Fellowship program which we hope to have restarted by the end of 2023.
♦ Developed and updated several important BSCES policies related to awarding scholarships, event registration, and administration of our Special Funds.
♦ Developed an award process for the Professor Peter S. Eagleson Memorial Scholarship. This important new scholarship will be BSCES’s largest scholarship and focused on traditionally underrepresented student populations.
♦ Lastly, but certainly not least, BSCES provided a substantial donation to our affiliate organization, The Engineering Center Education Trust, to help pay for the much-needed renovations of One Walnut Street, which has been BSCES’s home for over 30 years. Also, our donation included a matching gift for any donations made by BSCES member. I want to thank all the many BSCES members who also donated to TECET to help keep BSCES’s home in good repair.
This newletter’s theme is Emergency Preparedness. I recommend you look at the excellent articles by authors from Arup, GZA, and Tighe & Bond. Our featured group is the Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) Boston Chapter. This group’s chair, Matthew Page from GZA GeoEnvironmental, has written an article about the chapter and its activities. Please note that the chapter’s executive committee is looking for new members. If you would like to get involved, please contact Matthew at matthew.page@gza.com or copri@bsces.org.
Michael Cunningham, PE, from Kleinfelder is the BSCES president for 2023-2024. I have worked closely with Mike over the last several years and he is an exemplary volunteer. I wish him luck for the coming year and I am sure he will do a great job as president.