During the 2011-2012 school year, the officers, members, and advisors of Cal Poly Pomona ITE have worked together tirelessly to raise the bar to make its chapter more prominent and to get its members more involved. Additionally, they are working to further the goals of the Western District and Southern California Section.
This initiative began with the launching of a new, dynamic website featuring the chapters' events and transportation news. The next step was to increase their presence on Twitter (@itecpp) by interacting with the community of transportation professionals and advocates.
The enthusiasm of this year’s officers and members have taken the chapter in a new direction with outreach and projects, reinforcing Cal Poly Pomona’s learn-by-doing approach to education. Over the next ten weeks, a group of student chapter members will be going to a classroom at East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy School of Urban Planning once a week to teach students Civil Engineering. They will be doing this through a mini-project—an intermodal bridge design—which is sure to be an exciting and encouraging experience for the students.
The chapter is working hard to increase the transportation knowledge of its members. The chapter even placed 2nd at the Annual ITE Southern California Section Student Traffic Bowl (can you name the traffic signal warrants in the MUTCD? They also had a proposal selected for the 2012 Data Collection Project, that involved them testing an iPhone app (generously donated by Trafdata) to compare it to other data collection methods.
The chapter has also hosted a number of informative guest speakers and have enjoyed technical tours, thanks to local companies and organizations. Through these experiences, the chapter members have had the opportunity to learn about the industry and the workplace, as well as gain a chance to network with professionals.
As the chapter's Webmaster, Ruben Hovanesian puts is, "we’re on a role, and with the amazing support from ITE, next year’s only going to get better!"
Thank you to Ruben and chapter president, Eric Catig for providing the content for this article. Would you like to see your chapter highlighted? Send an email to cgarneski@ite.org.