IEEE Student Branch of Srilanka Technological Campus (SLTC), organized an Awareness day session for the new batches, on 19th June 2019. We invited two guest speakers; Miss Tharushi Natasha, IEEE Student Section Representative and Mr. Chanaka Hettige, IEEE Sri Lanka Section Student Activities Committee Chair.
The event began at 4:00 PM and ended around 6:00 PM, with more than 60 Students. The event was held with the goal of making new batches be aware about IEEE and to attract new members. A registration booth was setup to enable Students to register into IEEE and we were able to get 8 new members.
Our first guest speaker was, Miss Tharushi Natasha, the Section Student Representative (SSR) of Sri lanka Section. Miss Tharushi is a graduate from Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) who is currently working as an Electrical Engineer at Alta Vision (Pvt) Ltd. She has been involved in IEEE for over four years since she was an undergraduate at SLIIT. She is also the program manager for IEEE Chronicles. She was the Secretary of IEEE Innovation Nation 2018 during its pilot initiation as a global project. Tharushi was also a member of the secretariat team at IEEE Sri Lanka Student/Young Professionals/Women in Engineering Congress 2017 and the Secretary of the IEEE Student Branch of SLIIT back in 2017.She gave an awareness about what IEEE is all about and the benefits of being an IEEE member.
Followed by our next guest speaker, Mr. Chanaka Hettige, the IEEE Sri Lanka Section Student Activities Committee (SAC) Chair. Mr. Chanaka has been involved in IEEE for over five years, starting as a student member. He is also currently serving as the IEEE Young Professionals Sri Lanka Chair-Elect. He was the co-chair of IEEE Presidents Forum 2019 and chair of IEEE Innovation Nation Sri Lanka 2018 in its first year of international expansion. Chanaka graduated from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka where he received his BSc Engineering Degree specializing in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He is currently working as an Instructor (Teaching Assistance) at the same university while working part-time as an Assistant Secretariat Executive of Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN). Mr. Chanaka gave us an idea of volunteering in IEEE and how to volunteer right.
The Secretary of the Student Branch, Thuvaharani Thayaparan, presented about the Student Branch activities held so far, to inspire Students that the Student Branch is active and running.
The event was a success since it was an insight to non – IEEE members, as well as the IEEE members. This became a motivation to do more Student branch activities and to make the members learn more about volunteering, not for the sake of rewards, but for the sake of bettering ourselves.
Author – Thuvaharani Thayaparan
