American Institute of Chemical Engineering

Description

With more than 60,000 members from more than 110 countries, AIChE has the breadth of resources and expertise to guide core process industries or emerging tech areas. AIChE has a presence at many universities with local and state chapters seeking to inspire safe, connected, and inclusive chemical engineering communities. AIChE's mission is to make a positive change in the world with science. 

Roles

I quickly became involved in AIChE by being elected the Freshman Representative of the UNL AIChE Chapter in 2016. In this position, I advocated for the club and socially engaged with my peers. Over the next two years, I served as the Sophomore Representative and Vice President. In my senior year, I became the AIChE Chapter President. While serving this role, I headed an exec team tasked with planning and preparing the 2020 Mid-America Regional AIChE Conference at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This conference was ultimately canceled due to COVID concerns and was rescheduled to 2021. I am currently helping the new executive team plan the conference for this upcoming year.

Takeaways

The best part of being involved with AIChE has been professional growth. I've learned an immense amount about safety protocols, engineering standards, and engineering economics from taking online tutorials and interacting with other AIChE members. While serving many roles within AIChE, I helped to successfully cultivate an engaging community in and around the chemical engineering department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. However, there were many logistical nightmares and stressful moments that arose while working with the national AIChE organization, local businesses, and my university system. My team worked through these obstacles and are currently working around Covid complications to plan the next conference. On top of dealing with the fallout of the first conference, my chapter had to handle officer elections and virtual club meetings. These experiences caused me to alter my leadership understanding and realize that leadership is a skill that needs to be constantly honed and improved upon. It takes hard work, dedication, integrity, critical thinking, and confidence to be a leader, which are the same skills as a follower and teammate. Having the awareness of your position within a group and being able to seamlessly and effectively transition between these different roles is the true hallmark of a leader.