MINUTES OF THE
UTAH ENGINEERS COUNCIL
March 3, 2004 - 12:00 Noon
Van Boerum & Frank
330 South 300 East, Salt Lake City, Utah
Members Present: Members Absent:
Jeff Watkins, Chair ASHRAE Wendy Grosvenor, Treasurer ASHRAE
Linda Bachmeier, Vice-Chair SWE Carl Cook, 1st Past Chair ASCE
Sarah Winkler, 2nd Past Chair SEAU Bob Davis ACEC-Utah
Paul C. Oestreich IEEE David Merrill ASME
Carl Eriksson SEAU Chad Walker IES
Ken Randle AIAA Jay Nelson ITE
Kiran Bhayani AAEE Mike Norrie SAME
Rick Campagna ASCE
Dan Church USPE
Jim Belshe USPE
Lenard J. Barney UCLS
Susan Merrill Executive Secretary
1. WELCOME
Jeff Watkins, UEC Chair, called the meeting to order at 12:05 p.m.
2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES - February 4, 2004
Motion: Carl Eriksson moved to approve the minutes. Sarah Winkler seconded the motion.
The minutes were unanimously approved.
3. FINANCIAL REPORT - Wendy Grosvenor
Wendy was out of town and not able to attend. She gave her financial report to Jeff to distribute.
There are apparently some outstanding items that were paid for at the banquet that are not included
in the financial report. The $1670 is the deposit Linda made following the banquet for money she
received at the banquet. The scholarship receipts show $1,355 received, but Ken said we have
received $3,105. Apparently, some of the amounts in the budget report are incorrect. We’ll let
Wendy know so she can correct them and see if the report can be approved next month.
Rick Campagna mentioned that at this point, it appears that we are lacking $6,900 for banquet
tickets. He has received $5,180. Paul gave Susan $945 from IEEE. Jeff has some checks in his
office for tickets. Rick, and Jeff gave Susan the banquet ticket checks they had. Susan will get
them to Wendy.
4. COMMITTEE REPORTS
A. E-Week - Linda Bachmeier: The banquet went beautifully. There was a lot more room
than at Abravanel Hall. Linda asked the audio/video people about the loud popping noise that kept
occurring. Apparently, they isolated it to a particular box, the one the guitar was going through. She
hasn’t received a reply back from them about the cause of the noise.
Utah Foods did a great job. Linda has the bill for the audio/video stuff. She doesn’t have
the bill from Utah Foods yet. The corsage bill has been paid. We served 311 meals. We had
committed to 321. We had about 17 people not show up for a variety of reasons. Doing the
flowers through Utah Foods worked really well. It wasn’t any more expensive and it simplified life a
lot. The flowers were beautiful.
If we use the Grand Hall again next year, we need to consider that ACEC didn’t really push
the banquet again this year, and they sold 125 tickets this year versus 75 the previous year, so there
probably is still the potential for more people next year. The only thing on this setup that was a little
rough was that the first row of tables probably still struggled with line of vision, even though we set
up extra screens. So if we have about the same number of people, we may want to pull that first
row back a few feet to increase the angles to the screens. Multiple screens are essential at that
venue.
Linda has gotten really good feedback on the speaker. There were many favorable
comments.
B. Awards Committee - Carl Cook: Carl was out of town and not able to attend the
meeting. For the record, the award winners were as follows:
Engineering Educator of the Year - Dave Widauf from USU
Engineer of the Year - Rachel McQuillen
Fresh Faces in Engineering - Stephanie Mecham
MESA Teacher of the Year - Jelena Jensen from Granger High School
Scholarship (BYU) - Aimee Worthen
Lenard Barney mentioned that Dale Bennett was chosen as surveyor of the year at the
UCLS
convention three weeks ago.
C. Scholarship Committee - Wendy Grosvenor: The scholarship check was given to Aimee
Worthen. Next year the scholarship will be given to Utah State University. Thanks to Paul
Oestreich for filling in for Wendy at the banquet and presenting the scholarship to the winner.
The MESA teacher did get her check.
D. Publication Committee - Sarah Winkler: Jeff mentioned that Sarah did a very nice job on
the Journal. Sarah thanked everyone for their advertising support. Sarah passed out a report
showing expenses and income for the Journal. Expenses totaled $10,538 and Income totaled
$11,058, so we actually came out ahead by $520. Sarah asked if we should make a decision about
covering IEEE’s mailing permit fee which was $150 this year. Sarah paid it this year because it
hadn’t been paid when she went to use it for the Journal.
Sarah had good success with advertisements and business card ads because people
seemed to want to see the Journal survive.
Jim Belshe has expressed a willingness to take over the Journal next year. Many of his firm’
s clients go through McGraw-Hill/Intermountain Contractor. Jim would be willing to do the Journal
with McGraw-Hill, but he does not want to do what Sarah has done this year. It was mentioned
that our member societies are not able to give out their memberships addresses for a directory in the
Journal. Jim felt that Intermountain Contractor would not be interested in doing the Journal without
the directory. We will need to talk with Don at Intermountain Contractor - Jim’s conversations with
Don have indicated that the understanding was that there would be a directory.
Jim suggested that for the directory we really don’t want personal listings, but rather UEC
would send out an ad to engineering firms and societies saying we would like to list their firm for free
in our directory and give them a form to fill out. Then, if they want to buy bigger ads, they can from
Intermountain Contractor. That approach might work. It would be more helpful to have businesses
listed, anyway. That way, if they choose, those within the business can list themselves individually if
they desire. Jim feels that after the first year, people will see the results and more will probably want
to participate in the future. Jim’s firm put a half-page ad in the Journal and received five calls from
the ad and he retained three new clients, so he felt he got a good return for his advertising money.
He knows that people read the Journal and look at the ads.
Ken Randle wants to make sure that those who advertised in the Journal received a copy of
the Journal. Sarah said that every person who bought an ad had a Journal mailed to them. Ken said
John Hill hasn’t seen the Journal yet, and he put in a full-page ad. Sarah verified that 5,111
Journals were sent to the post office and the advertisers were on the list, but anything beyond that is
out of her control. Neither Sarah nor Jeff Watkins received their Journals in the mail, however, so
she knows at least two were lost in the mail, so there were probably even more. Sarah will give
Ken some Journal copies so he can make sure John Hill gets a copy.
Larry Reaveley at the U of U is a big fan of the Journal. He bought the back cover and
requested that if we had extra copies of the Journal, we would distribute them to the high schools to
promote engineering. He asked if we would make a contact with someone in the high school and
drop off the Journals to them. Sarah said we would do that. She got a list of high schools from the
University of Utah, but it is a list of MESA program contacts, so not all of the high schools are
listed. Linda said that MESA has a spring awards banquet and she doesn’t think they have had it
yet. She wondered if that would be the place to distribute the Journals. Susan expressed concern
that if we just distribute the Journals to MESA, then we are at risk of leaving out a large group of
students - Caucasian boys. Hopefully the MESA teachers wouldn’t just distribute to their students,
but we would have to make sure they have the understanding that the Journal is to go to all students
who are interested in engineering, not just MESA students.
Sarah suggested that each representative take an armload of Journals and drop them off to
his or her favorite high school. Suggested contacts would be science and math teachers and some
math or science counselors. We will distribute about 30 copies per school. We will keep some to
show to potential Journal advertisers for next year and we will give the remainder to MESA to
distribute at their banquet. Sarah has a list of high schools that will be covered.
E. Fund-raising Committee - Paul Oestreich: We had a very successful year. We are still
missing the check from Triumph Gear Systems. It is supposed to be in the mail. All other donations
have been received. We have brought in more money this year than ever before.
Ken passed out a chart showing what scholarship money should be in savings. We really
should put the scholarship money in a separate account. Jeff feels that we need to establish a trend
of receiving more scholarship money donations before we decide to give out more scholarships each
year. We don’t want to set a precedence we can’t continue in the future.
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved that we go ahead and separate the scholarship funds
and put them in a separate savings account. Kiran Bhayani seconded the motion. The motion was
approved unanimously.
It was suggested that we not only put the money in a separate account, but we put it in
some kind of a growth fund, one that perhaps would be renewed each year so we could withdraw
money without being penalized.
F. Membership Committee - Jay Nelson: Jay was not in attendance.
G. Scholarship Committee - Wendy Grosvenor: Wendy was not in attendance.
H. Nominating Committee - Sarah Winkler: The nominating committee has met and has
come up with a slate of nominees for Chair, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer. Wendy Grosvenor has
indicated that she will not be able to continue serving next year because she has a new position at
Johnson Controls that requires a good deal of traveling. Therefore, the slate of nominees for the
2004-2005 year is as follows:
Chair: Linda Bachmeier
Vice-Chair: Paul Oestreich
Treasurer: Dale Bennett
5. OTHER BUSINESS
Susan asked Jeff if he has the pictures of the award winners so she can post them on the Web site.
He will give them to her after the meeting. The Journal cannot be put on the Web site currently
because of software limitations. Susan will see if she can with the Front Page software. Sarah will
mail Susan a copy of the Journal in PDF format.
6. ADJOURNMENT
Motion: Linda Bachmeier moved to adjourn the meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:03 p.m.