Happy New Year, AIAA Atlanta and thank you Mr. Groundhog for the early Spring!!
The year of 2019 lies before us and AIAA Atlanta has many opportunities to excel in our endeavors to make a difference in the broad aerospace industry by setting and achieving lofty goals. I want to introduce you to some of these lofty goals and encourage you to take ownership of some of these as your own.
I say this because AIAA Atlanta is not just the Officers and Council members. AIAA Atlanta is You!! All 288 professional, 146 educator associate and 185 student members.
AIAA Atlanta includes your ideas, your interests, your aspirations, your achievements, your skills, your dedication, your participation. The Council represents just a small fraction of the cosmic resources that AIAA Atlanta possesses. I wish that every one of you were involved in some aspect of AIAA Atlanta, but that is just not practical. Many of you are involved in the governance of AIAA, technical committees and regional leadership. All of your participation is on purely volunteer basis.
I long ago realized that for any volunteer activity that the more you put in to it, the more is returned to you!!
I’m sure that many of you know that of which I speak from your own experiences.
What do you want to get out of being a member of AIAA Atlanta?
The Council has laid out a very ambitious agenda for the rest of the Section year and beyond and we need your help to achieve greater success. I ask that you consider being a Chair or member of a committee, organize and attend important aerospace events, contribute your time and money to worthwhile events.
Here is the first challenge. I will list more challenges in subsequent posts.
Challenge 1: AIAA Atlanta donates equipment to the very active Student Branch at Kennesaw State University. KSU is offering aerospace engineering classes for minor in AE. The ME & Systems Engineering Dept. is opening an Aero Lab spring semester 2019. AIAA Atlanta wants to sponsor some equipment, software or other resources to help this fledgling Lab get started. Could be wind tunnel support or data acquisition equipment, desktop 3D printer, MATLAB/Simulink, or similar, software, RC flight simulator station, off the shelf UASs (Drones), static models of gas turbine engines, compressor, fan and turbine blades, wing sections, a CNC foam cutter, laptop computer, tablets, VR goggles, etc. Whatever it is will have plaque or engraving “This item provided courtesy of AIAA Atlanta”. AIAA Atlanta will contribute some money and individual members are asked to contribute.
I, Aaron Harcrow, Chair, AIAA Atlanta, pledge $50 towards this donation and I challenge AIAA Atlanta members to match (greater or lesser amount accepted)!!! Make your pledge by sending email to me aaron.harcrow@aiaa-atlanta.org and we’ll worry about collecting later. We may set up a kickstarter or gofundme type website. We will present the equipment at the February 19, 2019, dinner meeting & tour of the Aero Lab on the KSU campus. This happens to be during E-Week which makes the event even more meaningful.
Thanks and
Cheers,
Aaron Harcrow