A Dying Organization Revived

Thursday officially marked the last day of my presidency of the New Jersey Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the multi-disciplinary engineering honor society. It has truly been an amazing experience serving as president this past year and I am so proud of what we as a Chapter have accomplished.

We embraced the challenge of becoming the next executive board with only one month of experience in the organization, yet we still pursued the audacious goals of winning the Chapter of Excellence Award and doubling our active membership. Circumstances became tumultuous during our first month in office as the COVID-19 pandemic quickly closed our campus and our expectation of a routine executive board cycle. We did not have many past leadership experiences to rely upon, as it was my first time being the president of an organization, and the remaining members of the executive board had not held leadership positions at Stevens. Navigating the future of our Chapter was not easy, especially when already attempting to revive a largely uninterested organization that only boasted ten members when we were inaugurated. We stood fast to our ideals of a more connected and involved membership and throughout our term as an executive board, we increased our active membership to sixty-five members. We hosted numerous events for our members, Stevens’ students, and the surrounding New York City and Hoboken communities. These efforts reflected our diligence, immense excitement, and growth potential of being a member of our Chapter. While we have made great strides to improve our service contributions to our community, there is always more that can be done. We have initiated a program to coach middle school students, from two NYC Title 1 schools, in MATHCOUNTS. We are beyond excited to begin teaching their fifty students and are grateful for this opportunity. This hard work from our entire organization culminated in our Chapter winning the Chapter of Excellence Award, given to the top 24 of 256 Chapters nationwide.

Above all else, I am most proud of the culture that we have established over the past year. We’ve developed an environment where students who have no prior leadership experience are able to develop their leadership skills and see their ideas come to fruition. I have seen this growth firsthand throughout our Chapter and I cannot be more proud of their resiliency and dedication to the continuous improvement of our organization. Thank you to the past executive board for helping make these goals a reality and congratulations to the new executive board!