The 2022 AIChE Annual Student Conference is a four-day event filled with career information, social events, competitions and fun activities for members to enjoy. Student engineers from more than 200 institutions came together to celebrate the chemical engineering profession, along with young professional members, organization leaders and industry professionals across multiple engineering specialties. On Nov. 11, members of the LU chapter of the organization traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to attend the conference.
“The goal of our organization is to offer professional events to assist students in their own personal development and help them know more about the industry, help them with internships, resume critiques and interview skills,” said Sony Tran, senior chemical engineering major and president of the organization. “We also offer a social aspect to chemical engineering students because we think that’s very important. Many times, chemical engineering students spend so much time studying that they start feeling isolated. Our organization works to host fun social events and a lot of ways for these students to meet each other and make potential friends in the major.”
Yearly, the AIChE national office awards the Outstanding Chapter Award to those student chapters that show an exceptional level of participation, enthusiasm, program quality, professionalism and involvement in their university and surrounding community.
“During the year leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, our chapter really kicked our engagement into high gear, and we became more active. The number of events we held went up by three to four times, our membership grew and that’s when we started pushing for this award,” Tran said. “We started realizing that we were capable or earning this award. So, we wanted to make this an annual thing.”
AIChE Chem-E-Car model
The Lamar University chapter of the organization has hosted multiple informational sessions, plant tours to local refineries and social events. In May of this year, the organizations team –– Sony Tran, Itsvan Salgado, Jerry Kohler III, Arturo Gonzalez, Arron Chambers, Alfredo Meza Jr., Elijah Keal, Collin Boutin and Colton Smith –– won third place at the AIChE Southwest Regionals competition for their Chem-E-Car project.
Winners of the Outstanding Student Chapter award received a plaque recognizing the president of the student chapter along with the groups hard work and dedication to professionalism, membership and service.
“It feels great. Every year we receive this award, and it shows that what we’re doing is being noticed and it’s important for us because it puts Lamar University on the same playing field as other universities,” Tran said. “To really spread the awareness of Lamar University, who we are, what we do and the type of engineers that we have joining the field is important to us. I think that us earning this award is a big part of our mission to do that.”
