The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) hosted the 2019 Region I New Jersey Zone Conference on Saturday, October 12 in the Babbio Center. At the conference, students could engage in professional development, leadership development, and technical development as well as have opportunities to network with fellow collegians and professionals in the field. There were 47 professionals and students in attendance, in addition to Regional Board members and presenters outside of NSBE.
The theme of the conference was “Fusing Power and People” and was chosen early in the planning process. “We were thinking about how we wanted the conference to help bring the NJ chapters together and strengthen the leadership pipeline,” explained Ha-mil Hutty, NSBE’s Conference Planning and PR Chair.
“I thought the theme was perfect, because NSBE’s mission is to increase the number of culturally-responsible Black Engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally, and positively impact the community,” explained Shania Taylor, who is currently serving as the NJ Zone Chair. “If we retain the power within each one of us as black professionals, then we can achieve our mission,” Taylor said.
The keynote speaker was Kwame Baptiste, a Stevens alumnus and former Region I Professionals chair for NSBE. According to Taylor, Baptiste spoke about his Stevens experience where he was juggling multiple jobs to pay for school, one of them being acting as Attila the Duck for Stevens even while taking a semester off. Another presenter was Sabrina Sanichar from the Stevens Career Center, who presented a workshop titled “Finding an Internship and Interviewing Techniques.” The workshop provided students with tips for conducting an internship search and addressing the self-assessment of values, interests, personality, and skills aligning with their career goals. Students also learned how to create a strategic job search plan and how to successfully pitch their experiences and skills during an interview to make a positive first impression.
Regarding planning of the conference, Hutty said, “We had started planning in July, when our New Jersey Zone e-board was only one person, and we planned throughout the summer. We were making changes up until the night before the conference.” The conference provided different chapters of NSBE in New Jersey the opportunity to get to know each other, especially members of different e-boards. Seven chapters from New Jersey were in attendance: Stevens, TCNJ, FDU, Princeton, Rutgers – New Brunswick, NJIT, and Rowan University. In addition, students from three chapters in New York: Baruch, NYU, and RPI, had joined.
The event took up all conference rooms in the Babbio Center during the Saturday it was held. “We would host it again, but it is also interesting to go to other schools and see how they do their conference,” said Hutty. He explained further that the New Jersey Zone Conference “allows for the members of NSBE to get to know each other, whereas the regional conference is quite different and would definitely not fit in a school because of the size.”
NSBE, on the national side, also has the goal of increasing the number of black students graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering annually to 10,000 students by 2025. According to the NSBE website, the vision of this goal is to enable “all black students [to] envision themselves as engineers.”
Students can get involved with NSBE by going to events and reaching out to the Stevens e-board members about how they can get involved. Its next event is called “Know Your Major” and will take place on October 24. They will be discussing careers related to the majors at Stevens, specifically STEM majors.
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