As the 2023 school year kicked off, the Student Endowment Fund would like to continue to highlight some of the great work the local student chapters have been doing! See below to get a couple more glimpses of their year so far and what they’re looking forward to in the upcoming year!

University of  California, Los Angeles

What was your approach for kicking off the school year?

• We kicked off this school year strong by attending three student welcome events: the school-wide Enormous Activities fair, the engineering school’s welcome day, and the school of public affairs’s welcome party! At each event, we enthusiastically advertised the benefits of professional development, industry experience, and mentorship opportunities of joining ITE. At the general meeting the following week, we proudly packed the conference room with over 50 attendees of varying majors and grades!

What has been your favorite event this school year so far?

• My favorite event was our annual post-general-meeting board-decorating social. It was the first social of the year; it was great to see and spend time with new and familiar faces! The finished product was a new bulletin board in the engineering building that was a fun collection of the club members’ group effort!

What is one event you’re looking forward to in the new year?

• Next year, I am looking forward to fresh field trips planned by our coordinator Kerry and his team of interns. But if I had to pick a single major event, we are looking forward to our annual Student-Professional mixer hosted by EVP Kelly and her intern team! It will give students a great opportunity to network and learn more about the transportation industry through professionals in a casual setting. Lastly, of course, we are looking forward to bringing a group to San Luis Obispo, to attend SLS 2024 hosted by the incredible team over at Cal Poly, SLO.

University of  California, Berkeley

What was your approach for kicking off the school year?

• While our school year did not technically start off yet the week of the ITE Annual Meeting, we had a great time going to Portland to meet other ITE Student Chapters and professionals! Not only that, but it was a great time to start bonding with the officer board so that we could work to plan for a good start to the school year. Coming back to Berkeley for the start of our school year, we did lots of tabling to get the club up and running. Through having students sign an interest form and letting them know about club info sessions, we were able to get ITE at UC Berkeley to around 40 members!

What has been your favorite event this school year so far?

• Since the beginning of this semester, we have held workshops on planning, operations, and design, company info sessions, professional mixers, a resume workshop, and also two socials; one with Cal ITE Student Members and another with USC and UC Davis ITE! The socials have been my favorite part about this school year so far, because of the ability to connect with other like minded students inside and outside our school.

What is one event you’re looking forward to in the new year?

• I am hugely looking forward to SLS at SLO in the new year, because I had such a memorable time at SLS in 2022. The event really brought me to the world of ITE and allowed me to realize how valuable the transportation industry was, in terms of the work that we do and the people that we will work with in the future! I am excited to reconnect with those who I met in past meetings and also meet new people at SLS in less than a month.

University of Southern California

What was your approach for kicking off the school year?

• As a group, the USC ITE e-board wanted to focus on hosting more high quality events for our community of transportation Trojans. So, we hosted an e-board retreat at the start of the year to plan our events for the entire year. We also tabled enthusiastically at a number of student organization fairs at USC during the first few weeks of school.

What has been your favorite event this school year so far?

• I loved our chapter’s weeklong professional trip to the San Francisco Bay Area just a few weeks ago! Our group made many great connections at organizations around the Bay Area, from BART to HNTB, and enjoyed (re)connecting with our friends at Cal ITE & UC Davis ITE.

What is one event you’re looking forward to in the new year?

• We’ve planned a tour of the LA Metro D Line Extension project, which recently finished tunneling work and a significant portion of the station construction. The D Line Extension project will be transformational for mobility in the LA metro area, and I’m very excited to see it at this advanced stage of construction.