It has been 5 long years since the NSBE AE SVC held their last Unity banquet. This was the staple event for the alumni extension in which they gave away scholarships to the best and brightest collegiate and high school NSBE members. This was a special year because it is the first time in 5 years that the NSBE AE SVC has been active. The tech bust destroyed the chapter in early 2000. Since then the new board has been working to revitalize the chapter. When the board decided to have the banquet there were many dissenters. People told us we were too young of a chapter, we weren’t going to be able to get the sponsorship, we didn’t have the membership, maybe we will be ready next year and many other negative remarks. Needless to say we didn’t pay attention to all those who doubted us. The banquet chair Jessica Miller put together an outstanding banquet.
The site of the banquet was a beautiful banquet hall in
There was a great mixture of NSBE Alumni, Students and Professionals. Attendees came from the Silicon Valley Alumni Extension,
The keynote speaker, Forrest Williams, had some strong words for the attendees. He stressed the importance of NSBE stepping up and taking leadership roles in the black community. NSBE represents a large segment of the next generation of black leaders. If NSBE members do not fill the leadership and mentorship roles in the black community many of them will remain unfilled.
Several students left the banquet with a good reason to be happy. Unity scholarships were awarded to 7 deserving collegiate students. The award recipients were each given a $1000 dollar scholarship presented by the sponsoring company. Other smaller dollar amounts were handed out to other students/ persons who excelled in specific categories. Students were awarded in the areas of technical excellence, creative expression, community service, and academic excellence. However, it wasn’t just the college students that benefited on this night. One alumni member left with a $1700 scholarship from Kaplan to pay for grad school prep courses.
The night ended with everyone’s favorite dance, the electric slide. This banquet was a testament to the power and potential that NSBE has. NSBE-AE-SVC was able to go from not having a chapter 10 months ago to hosting a banquet with over 100 attendees; sponsoring attendance of all college and PCI students, and giving away over $9000 in scholarships.
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Back by popular demand, the Silicon Valley Alumni Extension Chapter brings back the Annual End of Year Banquet with a bang. This year’s banquet brought together faces that I hadn’t seen since National Convention in 2006, so it was definitely nice to get the chance to catch up with old acquaintances and share the NSBE love. It was also a good chance for those of us who couldn’t make any of the Regional or Zone meetings the opportunity to meet some of our fellow NSBE members from other Bay Area chapter, and as the awards ceremony clearly displayed there are a lot of Black male and female engineers doing big things. The most notable award winners were from the SVC AE which heralds two of NSBE’s most outstanding leaders in Diego Dimes and Elvis Kibiti. Diego was presented an award for nearly $1K in Graduate School prep classes from Kaplan and Elvis was honored as the SVC Executive Board Member of the year for his unrelenting dedication to recruiting and retaining members.
Other highlights from the banquet were Dr. Sharbal Noujaim, the representative from LifeScan, the Diamond Sponsor for the event. Noujaim offered an interesting talk on the importance of engineers and on the work that LifeScan is doing to combat diabetes. Ironically he talked about this, just after most of us has scarfed down at least one piece of chocolate mousse. The banquet was also fortunate to have Leslie Stoval from 102.9 KBLX as the master of ceremony who did a good job of keeping things entertaining; and Councilmember Forrest Williams who made sure that all of us attending were proud to be engineers by making a number of quotes about the impact that we are having on the world. I had a chance to write down a few of them, with my favorites being one from Einstein that says “Scientists dream things that exists, engineers create things that do not exist.” Another one that I liked was “Scientists discover, engineers create.” Disclaimer: this is no way a bash against scientists…. One final quotation from the evening: Engineers aren’t biologists, physicists, mathematicians, or philosophers, instead they are all of them, and thus occupy a unique and integral occupation in society.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the food and atmosphere were both on point, and that I hope that the SVC will continue to sponsors these events. As a student it was a much needed break from the monotony of living on campus.
Marcelo Worsley - Stanford Chair Emeritus
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