Institution news
The CPGCE is a multidisciplinary engineering group which represents, the IMechE, IEC, IET and IStructE based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It has been in operation for 25 years.
In 2016, CPGCE had an official visit by John Hilton, the President of the IMechE. When the CPGCE executive leadership team discussed falling membership issues with him, he advised team to focus on the student engineers in their region and to try and engage them with the CPGCE. He also gave the team information regarding the IMechE grants and awards were available.
The CPGCE executive developed a plan to run an engineering scholarship competition. An award application was submitted based on the plans for a scholarship award and an outreach at the University of Calgary; CPGCEE were were very happy to receive the news that they had been granted the award in November 2016.
The scholarship which was rolled out in early September 2017, asked students to write an 1200 word essay on how engineering can change the world. The competition attracted 30 entries - 17 female and 13 male entries. Two prizes of $1,500 were awarded, two prizes of $500 and six prizes of $100 were awarded.
The outreach event was focused on worldwide engineering and working internationally. Each Institution produced a presentation including a few quiz questions to ask the students. The students seemed engaged and enjoyed the engineering quiz. After the presentation, pizza and pop was served, it was very informal - the pizza was a hit!
The outreach event was a success, CPGCE has made new links with the local university and now understand how to use social media effectively to communicate.
The scholarship awards were a fantastic method of not only providing financial support to some excellent engineering students, but also allowed CPGCE to make contact with the engineering students in our area.
The CPGCE executive would like to say thank you to the IMechE for providing this very generous award.