...NSBE (Literally) Saves the Bay!...

On Saturday, the NSBE Alumni Extension took its power and influence to the streets and participated in a tree planting event hosted by the Save the Bay organization. Our planting location was the marshy area east of Palo Alto…or in East Palo Alto. Apparently, it doesn't take very long to drive to a natural wildlife environment because it was only within a few short turns off of Highway 101 that we reached our destination.




Roughly 25 people braved the mild winds and overcast conditions to populate the soil along an unpaved road with foliage, and of the group, six people represented the NSBE alumni chapter on a cold Saturday morning.







The next time you're out on a friendly/romantic walk (you know, whichever), be sure to ask which plant was put in place by the Silicon Valley NSBE Alumni Extension. It'll make you proud.

...March NSBE Jr. Meeting...

The March meeting was all about planes. The turnout was great; it was a meeting with mostly new faces. The students arrived to learn about geometry and they completed very difficult problems which had even the mentors looking at answer keys for help.

After math warm-up problems, the students took some time to get to know each other. The icebreaker involved learning facts about the other students. A few brave volunteers were able to recite three names of people they had just met that day.

The guest speaker for the March NSBE Jr meeting was Ben Henderson. Ben is retired from both the US Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration. He is currently a pilot and is in the process of starting a non-profit organization to teach kids how to fly. Ben spoke about being the best at whatever you attempt to do in life. He also answered questions ranging from how the average auto pilot works on planes, to how pilots can see in the fog. The kids enjoyed getting first -hand interaction with an experienced pilot.

After Mr. Henderson motivated the students about aviation, it was their turn to build their own gliders. The gliders were built from a single sheet of balsa wood, and they took many different forms. The April NSBE Jr meeting with determine which of the gliders flies the farthest.

Three of the students will be attending the National Convention in Orlando, Fl, thanks to Applied Materials. The students will have travel, hotel, and conference registration entirely paid for by the company. The National Convention will give the students an opportunity to learn about engineering disciplines, get hands on experience in various workshop sessions, and meet other young, bright minds from all over the country. They are very excited about their upcoming trip and will give an update to the group upon their return.

Please join us at the next NSBE Jr meeting on April 12, 2008.

... Habitat for Humanity with NSBE Jr. ...

Our January meeting changed things up in an effort to give back to the community. We partnered with Habitat for Humanity to help build houses in Santa Clara. Whether climbing on a roof or hammering in countless nails, students gained an understanding of engineering in action and the benefits of helping others.

Please enjoy the pictures from the Habitat for Humanity day of fun, community service, and HARD work!








Isn't it a great feeling to know that you're sore from a day of hard work for the community?! Much pride goes out to the team who represented NSBE Jr. and our NSBE Alumni Extension chapter to the community.

... December NSBE Jr. Meeting ...

Our December meeting started with a seminar on SAT preparedness. A guest speaker from KAPLAN described the new SAT and tips and tricks to improve your score. Once students were prepped for the SAT we moved into engineering design topics. Engineering design has many applications and the students were asked to apply engineering design principles when designing bridges. Four teams competed and had varying strategies to solve the problem given to them. The winning team discovered how to quickly and effectively carry out their design concept.

... November NSBE Jr. Meeting ...

Saturday’s November NSBE Jr. meeting on the campus of San Jose State University focused on the subject of computer science. Our NSBE Jr. Champion, Jessica, along with individuals from our NSBE Alumni chapter and from SJSU, came up with some great presentations and activities that seemed to get the kids excited about science and engineering concepts; either that or they were faking it and would have a brighter future in Hollywood.

A speaker from Yahoo! discussed computers and practical applications in which computer science is used. Students listened intently as they learned of everyday applications that used computer science to make them work. After learning about computer science, the students were given the opportunity to actually write their own programs. Students at San Jose State University led an exercise using a program called Alice, available at http://www.alice.org/. (There’s a GREAT promotional video available on the website for those who are wondering how this all works. Their future endeavors will incorporate The Sims computer game!) This software package allowed students to program virtual environments by using a drag-and-drop feature for programming. The virtual worlds created were both educational and entertaining.

Another activity that we all engaged in was the ‘Build-A-Bridge-That-Will-Hold-Massive-Weight-in-A-Relatively-Short-Period-of-Time’ Challenge. The techniques that the kids used to win the challenge were pretty interesting. The rules were not too stringent so the kids engaged in various over-the-top techniques to accomplish the complex task. This leads one to believe that these kids, while extremely motivated to follow the path of righteousness (we hope…), would be able to perform outstandingly well in future jobs by completing tasks “by any means necessary” with a few exceptions to the term “means”. We’ll see who wins the next event.

It’s the battle of the adults vs. the little whipper-snappers, the ancient-of-days vs. the Young and the Restless, the Dinosaurs (no disrespect to people 24 and above) vs. the newborns… Come out to the next PCI meeting to support your age group!!!!! Come out to support the Kids!!!!

... Silicon Valley AIDS Walk 2007 ...

Maybe not all bragging is bad bragging. TO celebrating a touchdown while his team is down 30 points = bad bragging. Some famous guy writing a book on how he would have done something bad to “someone he loved” had he done it … neither a good idea nor the good kind of bragging. Elvis doing his victory dance over Diego for beating him in the annual “lets see who will raise more money for a good cause –athon” … not classy but warranted, definitely not classy.



The day was as picturesque as can be … a great reminder of how good we have in it California … Jessica had her walking mojo on, Renee was in on a red clothing competition with a couple of other participants (Red apparently indicated support for AIDS), Alex V was the official walk hype man, Tari was the pretty boy (I kid you not on this one – one of the traffic control cops commented that he was “dressed for club AIDS walk”, Diego was late as always … where does it end.





So we may have set our goals a little too high this year. We came short of last year’s total money raised but the great news is that as a team we raised a percentage point of the total amount of money raised. We fell a little short given that African Americans make up 2.8% of the Santa Clara County population and that a huge number of all new HIV and AIDS cases come from within the African American community. I didn't say it, Oprah did. More work definitely needs to be done. No doubt about it.



The walk in itself was fun. We definitely had a good time hanging out and the trip to the Thai restaurant later on was a fun experience. HDTV football on big screen capped it all in a way that couldn’t be better summarized than by the mission statement itself … “positively impacting the community”

... October NSBE Jr Meeting ...

On October 13th, the students in NSBE Jr. had their first official meeting of the school year at San Jose State University. What is NSBE Jr. you ask? NSBE Jr. is the chapter based aspect of NSBE’s Pre-College Initiative (PCI) program. NSBE’s PCI is designed to encourage middle and high school students to excel in math and science and give them the tools necessary to successfully complete college. The NSBE Jr. meetings are hosted by mentors from both San Jose State University and the Silicon Valley Alumni Chapter.












The meeting began with students working through some difficult math problems. One student, Andrea, even volunteered to work through the problem on the board for the other students to follow along. After the students completed their math problems, we moved on to the meeting topic for the month: Robotics. Seitu Barron, a mechanical engineer and member of the Silicon Valley Alumni Chapter, spoke to the students about robots. His presentation included examples of robots in every day life as well as futuristic dancing robots.

The students, ranging from 5th to 12th grade, also participated in an interactive activity designed by college students at San Jose State. The students designed motors using primarily a wire coil, magnet, and battery. Initially the task was difficult, but the students stuck with it and explored ways to improve their motors. By the end of the exercise, all of the groups had spinning motors. Some of the students were so proud of their motors that they took them home for further improvements.

Next month’s meeting will be on November 10th from 10 am to 2 pm at San Jose State. The topic will be computer science and the students will be coding their own programs. If you are interested in helping out, please contact Jessica Miller for details (jessica_miller_52@yahoo.com).

... Juneteenth 2007 ...

By Roger "Denny" Ramses

The shift started out a little slow but traffic picked up a little as the afternoon progressed. The people that we spoke to while we were at the booth were an interesting mix. There were a number of families with children that we were able to discuss the PCI programs with, and I think several of them seemed pretty interested in getting their kids involved in the programs. Actually a few of the parents and grandparents that I spoke to had already heard about the PCI programs at San Jose State and they were happy to find a way of connecting with the organization. The children and adolescents that came to the booth enjoyed the science demos despite our somewhat feeble attempts at explaining them.

There were also a number of people who came by who were either engineers or had relatives who were engineers. A lot of these people were also already familiar with NSBE and they were happy to discover the alumni chapter restarting. One lady who stopped by was actually a past member of the Silicon Valley AE chapter and she had some interesting anecdotes about days gone by.

So overall it was a good day and hopefully a few people will become affiliated with NSBE because we were out there. It might have been nice to have a little more visibility, but I think we were pretty successful anyway.

... Unity Banquet ...

By Diego Dimes, President

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 Sunnyvale, The Historic Del Monte Building. This was not just a hotel with a big room but an actual banquet hall that only caters to large banquets. Leslie Stoval a veteran radio personality from the bay area was the MC for the night. She added a touch of personality to the event.

There was a great mixture of NSBE Alumni, Students and Professionals. Attendees came from the Silicon Valley Alumni Extension, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, San Jose State, Berkeley, San Francisco State, San Jose City College, Canada College as well as from the East Bay PCI chapter. The sponsoring companies: Cisco, Genetech, HP, IBM, J & J, Abbot Vascular, and Kaplan also sent representatives.

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.