SNAME held its annual Chair/Vice Chair Elect Seminar, at the Saddlebrook Resort in Florida on Friday, June 2nd and Saturday, 3rd. Out of sixteen active Sections, a total of fifteen incoming Section Chairs/Vice Chairs attended the Seminar. In addition to the incoming officers, SNAME President, Dr. Compton, four Regional Vice Presidents and guest speakers also attended and participated in the weekend-long event.

This year was also the first year that the Student Officers were invited to participate and given the opportunity to interact with the other participants attending the training seminar for incoming Chairs/Vice Chairs of Sections.

Annual photo on the bridge.

Friday began with an introduction for the Students attending the seminar and a presentation of the question on the value of student membership in SNAME, followed by a reception and dinner for all of the attendees to meet and become acquainted. After dinner, Dr. Walter Maclean gave a presentation on Professional Engineering, and Mr. Bill Hurley introduced the SNAME Strategic Plan, followed by an open forum discussing on whether or not SNAME should become a fully electronic Society, prompting much discussion and exchange of thoughts and ideas.

The seminar continued on Saturday with presentations on Sections, Membership, T&R, Scholarships, Finances, Website, Publications, Outreach, Awards and Nominations. Later that afternoon, the incoming Section leaders were divided into groups with their Regional Vice President as a facilitator. The idea was to give the incoming officers an opportunity to discuss issues affecting their local Section, the Regional Vice President a chance to become aware of issues affecting his/her Region, and the opportunity for the group to form a relationship and discuss solutions for each Region. The brainstorming session brought forth the issues of local Section meetings and the challenge of geographical location for Sections that are scattered among many states, content of presentations to maintain interest of attendees, communication of these meetings and the lack of company support in the industry, which led to an open forum discussion. Some proposed solutions to address these issues are:

Create a list of companies for Section leaders to contact for local Section presentations, Networking by the collection of business cards, and Leaders in the industry need to be contacted by leaders in SNAME for their support.

Overall, the Seminar was well received by the students and incoming local Section leaders. SNAME was proud to have the students attend, and will continue the Student Chair-Elect Seminar in the future.

Report submitted by Edith Nowak, Sections Manager, SNAME HQ

 

Student Leadership Training Program a Success!

The very first Student Chair-Elect Seminar was held June 2nd and 3rd at the Saddlebrook Resort, alongside the long-running and successful Chair-Elect Seminar. All in all, the new student program can be considered a success! A total of 22 students attended the seminar. They represented 18 (of SNAME’s 24) Student Sections and 4 Student Steering Committee officers. The goals of the program were to educate these up and coming leaders about SNAME, the value contained in a SNAME membership, and offer pointers about how to run a successful Student Section. A by-product of the event was the networking and newly formed friendships between and amongst students and professionals (including Sectional, Regional, and National leaders of SNAME).

Student leaders participated in a variety of events geared towards training them to be the next generation of SNAME and industry leaders. More specifically, the program provided insights to our young leaders on how to run an effective Student Section. SNAME gains most of its student members from Student Sections, and it is from this “pool” that SNAME draws its Associate and Full Members. By helping our Student Sections, we are helping attract young members who will stay for the lifetime of their careers, if not longer. The Student Chair-Elect Seminar helped educate the newly elected Student Section chairs, so that they could better represent SNAME to their fellow students.

First annual student photo on the bridge!

While at Saddlebrook, the students split their time between joint events with Local Section leaders and events specifically held for students. Students sat in and voiced their opinions on several topics related to general membership, scholarship programs, and SNAME’s new knowledge management plan. A portion of their time was also spent learning about Student Section operations, and discussing ways in which they can improve how and what their Student Section does over the course of the school year. Above all else, the student leaders were able to learn more about SNAME in general, why SNAME is important to them and their careers, and why that information should be taken back to their respective schools and shared with their classmates.

The Student Steering Committee would like to thank the numerous SNAME Sections, as well as individual members and businesses, whose donations made the Student Chair-Elect Seminar possible. Finding and keeping the younger generation of naval architects and marine engineers is a top priority of SNAME. We believe that the Student Chair-Elect Seminar will prove to be a very successful tool in combating student member loss. Based on the positive feedback from students and SNAME leadership alike, we hope that this new student program becomes a permanent addition of the annual Saddlebrook program.

Report submitted by Matt Unger, Chair, Student Steering Committee

Click here for more photos of classes, cocktails, and the annual pool volley ball game!

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The 17th Biennial International Shipping Exposition, Posidonia 2006, was held this year in Athens, Greece on June 5-9. Representing Headquarters was Executive Director, Phil Kimball, who managed a co-located booth with SNAME’s partner, The Maritime Group. The Exposition had been relocated this year from the Piraeus Exposition Center in the Port of Piraeus to the site of the old Athens airport where temporary buildings had been erected just for this event. Over 1600 booths representing marine-related companies from 78 countries, and 16,000 visitors were in attendance for the weeklong exposition, festivities and social events.

Phil Kimball, Wes Wheeler and Rich Gilmore at the SNAME booth

Many members visited the booth and the Greek Section volunteers were ever present to answer questions and help with the overwhelming flood of new member applications and SNAME book orders. We were pleased with the traffic and sales in 2004, but this year we broke all records with 38 new members and $5500 in sales, many 100’s of percent better! In the process we also succeeded in meeting our primary goals of meeting and greeting existing Greek Section members, spreading the Society’s goodwill, and expanding the knowledge of the Society’s technical expertise to international shores. At least two days were required to walk around and visit all of the booths, but fortunately we had enthusiastic and capable volunteers from the Greek Section to assist us each day. Assisting throughout the week were Petros Lalangas, Gregory Grigoropoulos, Spiros Malliaroudakis, Nikos Dionissopoulos, and Apostolos Elvatzis.

With a reception like this, clearly SNAME will be back in Greece for Posidonia 2008!

Phil Kimball and Greek Section volunteers, Apostolos Elvatzis and Spiros Malliaroudakis.

A replica of an historic ancient Greek “Trireme” warship located near the site of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games at the Greek Navy Warship Exhibit in Athens. [For more information, see John F. Coates’ paper entitled, “Research and Engineering Aspects of Reconstructing the Ancient Greek Trireme Warship,” Transactions, Vol. 98, 1990, pp. 239-262.]

Check out the Greek Section's report on this too!
(use the "Section News" link at top of this issue)

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