The University of California, Los Angeles Student Chapter has been award the ITE Student Chapter Award! Please join us in congratulating the UCLA student chapter on their commitment to excellence this past year! The Student Funding Initiatives Committee looks forward to continuing to support student chapters to grow!

Below are a couple of thoughts and words of advice from the 2023-2024 UCLA ITE Student Chapter Leadership.

• What was your teams’ strategy in developing this report?
  • The Secretary of our officer board has a dedicated role to be the author of our Annual Report (including the Student Chapter Award). Most of the writing work is done by them, keeping the report clean with a singular writing style. However, it is good to ask your fellow officers for backup help; whether for proofreading, clarification on information you don’t know well, or to just write a section you’re not confident on.Do not start the report just a few days before the deadline, especially if you want proofreading and outside clarification. Don’t start too early in the year, though; you’ll want a good selection of events to look through when you begin writing.Following the rubrics provided by Western ITE and ITE International was also an essential part of writing the report. It gives us an outline for how to write the report, and also gives us a checkbox for what qualities our chapter can continue to improve in.Lastly, keep a detailed record of your club’s events to use as easy reference when writing the report. Immediately after every event that we hold, the organizers write a short event report. This includes the event description, attendance, things that went well, things that can be improved on for next time, and some photos. These are all compiled into one document in Google Slides. Recording is everything; we even have a Historian on our board to take and organize photos of our events, which we choose from for the photos in the annual report’s final page. This is not just a good reference for report writing, but also for our future event organizers.
• What are some plans your team has for this upcoming school year?
  • It is our chapter’s vision to continue growing the club as a family for students in transportation planning, engineering and enthusiasm. It is our chapter’s ambition to host the largest Student Leadership Summit yet, connecting students and professionals from all across the country in Los Angeles. In addition to SLS,  we plan to continue hosting all of our annual events including our career fair and to keep collaborating with other chapters, clubs, and companies!

• How did the past year compare to your expectations.
  • Last year, our chapter grew significantly in terms of leadership. We had the largest intern cohort we’ve ever had, with over 10 students volunteering their time to support club officers and events. This provides a wonderful opportunity for officers to learn to delegate, mentor a newer student, and grow as leaders.One major lesson that I learned is that a chapter president’s role is to not to oversee every detail of each event, but to uplift and encourage your board members. I realized that my job was to keep the club whole and running, and it would have been impossible to do that if I was focused in every event detail!Every year of our chapter’s existence, we have been proud of ourselves. However, we are extra proud to win the SLS bid and Student Chapter of the Year Award, because it means that we are being recgonized by greater ITE and industry! I am so appreciative of all the members of ITE since our chapters inception and look forward to seeing all that our future members will accomplish.
• Anything else may help inspire other clubs!
  • Start with intention! Think about you and your club’s why. Why does a transportation career excite you? How can you share that feeling, that passion with others? What is the best way to reach people of your age and interests? Transportation people are the best; they will come out, and once you’ve found them, they’ll stick!
  • Have fun with it! I believe what makes UCLA’s chapter so enjoyable is that all of our members share our appreciation for transportation not as an industry, but a service! Take time to network and become friends with fellow members and the event planning and projects will be so much smoother.