11 Skills and Attributes: Team Development
Leadership Objective: Divide up responsibilities and collaborate
Activity: Engineers without Borders Great Lakes Conference (2008)
Evidence: Great Lakes Conference Website
In fall 2008, the executive board of Engineers without Borders (EWB) at UIUC hosted the EWB Great Lakes Regional Conference. Since I was on the EWB board and on campus in the summer before fall 2008, I also felt an obligation to help organize the regional conference. I communicated regularly with our secretary and corporate chair to see what unassigned tasks remained. After checking with others to avoid duplication of work, I put together the workshop artwork and website along with detailed corporate sponsorship packages and convincing invitations to other EWB student chapters to attend the conference. While a few shortcomings were encountered in obtaining generous corporate sponsors, I was successful in getting significant participation from student chapters across the Great Lakes Region and got notable praise for the workshop artwork and EWB-UIUC website.
The main highlight of organizing the conference was using the Internet to work together with executive board members who were mostly off-campus during the summer. We proofread each other's letters to be sent out and other conference materials. I only met with one other board member personally on campus but used email and instant messaging to contact other board members. Thus I helped make our executive board function as a team, encouraging mutual accountability to make the conference a success.