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 2008
President’s Message
I would like to wish everyone a very happy new
year. This year promises to be better and more
exciting than the last. The holiday and
new year’s season gives us an opportunity look
at what we have done in the past year and set
new goals for the coming year.
Here’s a quick recap of last year. The post
increased its membership from 31/19 to 79/92
individual/sustaining members respectively and
we have 21 sustaining member firms. As a result
of this growth, we are now recognized as a
medium post. At the Joint Engineering Training
Conference and Expo in May 2007, we were awarded
three streamers for the quality of the programs
that we provide to our membership. On the
financial end, we are becoming more capable of
sustaining the scholarship program. Last year,
we held our 3rd annual scholarship
dinner where we presented a scholarship check to
Mr. George Balog
while his parents looked on. Our ability to
support the scholarships is due in large part to
the funds we raised during the 3rd
Fort Detrick (FD) Post golf tournament. I would
like to thank Mr. Ed Niko, our golf tournament
coordinator, the volunteers, and the sustaining
member firms for their contributions.
The FD Post also began a mentoring and education
outreach program which is bound to bear fruit
for years to come. Working with the
Walkersville High School teachers, we shared our
professional experiences with students
interested in engineering and judged their end
of semester projects. The year culminated with
Dr Eaton, President of Frederick Community
College, as our guest speaker at the Holiday
party. She provided great insight about
training and educational opportunities.
This year, the FD Post will focus efforts in 3
major areas; sustainability training programs,
quality professional development opportunities
for our membership, and educational outreach.
We intend to build on the Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design (LEED) workshop from
last year by facilitating additional training
and study groups for those interested in
becoming LEED certified. On the educational
outreach front, we plan to send a student to one
of the SAME engineer camps in addition to
offering college students scholarships. The
deadline to submit an application for engineer
camp and/or the FD post scholarship is 1 March
and 1 April respectively!
We are looking for companies to support our
“Engineer/Architect/Project Manager for a Day”
by allowing local school students to shadow one
of your employees for a day. Please contact me
if you or your firm can help.
Many thanks to all those folks that helped make
last year a banner year. I wish you and the
Post the best in the months to come.
Donald Archibald, Fort Detrick Post President
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We
are post-poning the August program to a date TBD!
