RCEL hosts innovative conference with 14 universities, gains recognition

By Andrew Ta     3/25/14 8:10pm

The Rice Center for Engineering Leadership held what it called the first-ever national conference on engineering leadership for undergraduate students last Friday, according to RCEL Co-Director Ray Simar. 

The Rice Center for Engineering Leadership held what it called the first-ever national conference on engineering leadership for undergraduate students last Friday, according to RCEL Co-Director Ray Simar. 

“It was the first one of its kind in the nation,” Simar said. “Our whole focus with the conference was teaching engineering leadership in a university, [which is] why the founders are 14 different universities. The idea was to start to share more of these experiences.”

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The conference brought together more than 14 engineering leadership centers from across the U.S. and Canada, along with industry leaders and other professional engineering organizations, according to the conference website. Keynote speakers included the president of the National Academy of Engineering and the director of the Johnson Space Center, Simar said.

Simar said participants in the conference included faculty and students from each of the organizing universities.

“We had 240 registered attendees,” Simar said. “About 80 of [those were] faculty; different people from different universities. The other two-thirds were students; the 14 different universities brought some of their students and we had our students.”

Simar said the conference bodes well for Rice’s reputation in the engineering field.

“I think it [was] a great opportunity for the students,” Simar said. “We had really good interest. The students here – they had really positive things to say about it. I do think it’s important in terms of Rice’s reputation, to sort of hold the first of these and begin to help this process and communicate this kind of agenda and be able to share it with other people.”

Simar said participating in similar conferences will always benefit Rice.

“In a way, the bigger thing is that it’s great for students and the faculty to hear what these other universities are doing and talking about [and asking themselves], ‘How can we make Rice better from what we’re learning?’”

According to Simar, there aren’t firm plans for the next conference, but there will undoubtedly be another.

“The first one was held here,” Simar said. “Within the complete organization, we’ll [probably] hold the event annually. We’re going to have some discussion about that. This won’t be the last one. We’ll have more; we’ll have to figure out the rate, and what we might do is rotate around where they’re held.”

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