One year ago, I took over as EWB Sheffield’s President aiming consolidate our activities and develop the society. A year later, we, as a Committee, have done just that.
Developing relationships in the faculty has opened up the society to great deal of support that we hadn’t previously utilised. Particularly, redefining the role our academic mentor plays in supporting the society and forging links with the Engineering Faculty’s Student-Led Project fund has allowed the societies’ voice to be heard at higher level discussions. This in turn has allowed the Committee to make decisions based on a firmer understanding of the bureaucracy of university life. This allowed and will allow projects greater access to support and money going forward.
EWB Sheffield was also proud to host its first Designathon this year. The Committee agreed at the start of the year that the Society’s role should develop to provide more events for our membership. The Designathon idea was spawned out of this goal and soon took shape as the Autumn floods in Sheffield decided our engineering problem.
After a long initial planning phase to organise logistics, the Committee were mobilised to draw up a brief and plan for the day, as well as organising judges and catering. By all accounts the day was a great success with feedback that will allow the new Committee to develop the event further next year with the lessons we have learnt!
Looking back on how far the Society has come, I am incredibly proud and grateful of what we have achieved as a Committee. I could not have hoped for a better group of people to help spread EWB’s aim of working towards sustainable engineering and make achieving that goal this year such a joy!
All that is left is to thank this year’s Committee and wish next year’s good luck, especially Nathan Strathdee who will be taking over my role! I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have.
Alastair White
EWB Sheffield President 2019-2020
Engineers Without Borders Sheffield 