President's Message

Met Section Members Attend ASCE Leadership Conference in Indianapolis

Met Section President-Elect Jagtar Khinda accepts the Outstanding Website Award from ASCE President Randy Over.

ASCE President-Elect Robert Stevens and his wife have lunch with Region 1 Director Mark Rusnica.

Putting Your Public Speaking Skills To The Test Transitioning Students to YM's Taking STEM Education to Schools Membership Development Public Service Announcement Raise The Bar

Region 1 Governor Tony Cioffi, a Past President of the Met Section, speaks to conference attendees.

Over the weekend of February 7-8, ASCE members from Regions 1, 2, 4 and 5 (which covers most of the states east of the Mississippi River) gathered in Indianapolis, Indiana for ASCE's Annual Multi-Region Leadership Conference. This conference included activities for Section and Branch Leaders, the Eastern Regional Younger Member Council, and Student Chapter Leaders. While there were some common activities that all attendees participated in, each group had a separate track of events.Conference attendees from the Metropolitan Section included: Jagtar Khinda from the Met Section Board of Directors; Adam Devito from the Long Island Branch, Eric Basu and Kimberly Hirt from the Younger Member Forum; Emily George and Gerard O'Donnell from Cooper Union; Prof. Anirban De, Brian Manning and Lia Pantusa from Manhattan College; and Kelly Huang, Lana Kalaitzis, Carolina Mata, Hisham Sageer, Prof. Gerarda Sields, Ronald Suarez, Bingjing Zheng, Rosa Lo, and Judith Zhao from New York City College of Technology. Region 1 Governor Tony Cioffi also attended the conference.The conference opened on Friday morning with a continental breakfast and a welcoming by Michael Wenning, Chair, Leadership Training Committee as well as the Mayor of Indianapolis and ASCE Executive Director Pat Natale. Common topics discussed during the day included: an introduction of the organizational structure of ASCE, leadership training, a keynote from industry leaders that have made leading others a career goal and found success, and best practices breakout sessions on:The first day of the conference also included icebreaker activities for attendees to meet other leaders within their region and an Order of the Engineer ring ceremony. The day concluded with a reception sponsored by the Indiana Section and Metropolitan-Indianapolis Branch.Saturday's slate of activities began with a networking breakfast and was followed by a presentation by Blaine Leonard, PE, D.GE, F.ASCE, ASCE 2010 President on the value of mentoring and how it can help you professionally. Conference attendees then had an opportunity to participate in an open mike question and answer session with ASCE President Randy Over, President-Elect Bob Stevens, and Pat Natale. The Met Section received the Outstanding Website Award for Very Large Section and Branches at the Section and Branch Award portion of the conference. This is the third year in a row that the Met Section has won the website award. ASCE Met Section President-Elect Jagtar Khinda accepted the award on behalf of the Section.After a networking lunch, 2014 ASCE President-Elect, Robert Stevens, PhD, PE, F.ASCE spoke about Society issues. He will be the Met Section's guest of honor at the Annual Dinner Dance and Awards presentation on June 19th. The conference concluded with a discussion of professional ethics by Tom Smith, Esq., M.ASCE, Deputy Executive, Director & General Counsel and Tara Hoke, Esq., Deputy General Counsel from ASCE. They covered a vast area of legal issues involving civil engineers and the ASCE.The 2015 leadership conference for ASCE Regions 1, 2, 4 and 5 will be held from January 9-10 in Miami, Florida.