LETTER: Engineering students should take advantage of award opportunities

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by Mitchell Wu

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To the editor:

Hello, are there any engineering school students out there?

About 350 notices were sent to all Rice Engineering School students regarding the annual Rice Engineering Alumni (REA) Student Awards Picnic in April.

Several incentives are available such as a free meal for the attendees, not to mention $12,000 in scholarship funds to be awarded.

From the 350 notices, 60 students requested applications for the scholarships, but only 29 were submitted. The entire REA board and even the faculty theorized a number of reasons that the number of applications was low.

Was it time? A lack of awareness? Do all Rice students come from millionaire families? Was the "reward for effort" not big enough?

Although there are various categories with different monetary levels, from a risk taker's perspective, picture a $12,000 lottery with only 29 tickets purchased.

Perhaps a reader would be challenged to determine the odds of taking home the prize and help the School of Engineering with its marketing campaigns.

The REA does many unique things behind the scenes, but the task of communicating the information to the current students and the 7,000 alumni across the country can be challenging as well as expensive.

Time-sensitive information from the REA can't be broadcast to students, and believe it or not, despite all the high-tech communications, not everyone has access to computers, e-mail, the Internet or fax machines.

The Rice Engineering Alumni board is the oldest support organization that is associated with Rice University.

We welcome any suggestions about how to increase awareness of items such as scholarships, student and corporate involvement, career mentoring, etc. or simply how you think REA can help you.

Hard copy or e-mail your suggestions or comments to the Dean of the School of Engineering.

The faculty faithfully attends the monthly REA board meetings and is sincerely interested in your input.

At the very least, we again invite all the students of the Rice School of Engineering to the April Awards picnic.

Mitchell Wu

Rice Engineering Alumni

BSME '77

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 29, 1996 issue.

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