As of fall 2012, the College of Engineering is home to the highest undergraduate enrollment out of the six undergraduate colleges at Iowa State.

With a high student enrollment comes a breadth of opportunities and resources available to engineers within the college.

Maintaining solid academic standing is essential to one’s success in the College of Engineering, but getting involved outside of the classroom also holds much significance as one looks to their professional future.

One way a number of students get involved is through student organizations, or less formally known as clubs.

At the beginning of the fall and spring semesters, engineering club fairs take place at the Howe Hall atrium. These events provide students an opportunity to meet with representatives from nearly all of the engineering student organizations available at Iowa State.

Students also have the opportunity to sign up for a student organization right on the spot.

“You can sign up anytime. The easiest way to do it, if you can’t make it to the club fair, is to go to the student organization website where you can search for clubs and request to join. The club fair’s just a really good way to look at all of them at once in a friendly setting,” said Rebecca Briesmoore, 2012 vice president of events for the Engineering Student Council.

One student organization a student may encounter at the club fair may be the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), which seeks to provide an environment that both welcomes and encourages female engineers at Iowa State.

“At our meetings we have a company from industry come every time, and they give a professional development topic as well as talk about the opportunities within their company,” said Cara Petrie, president-elect of the Society of Women Engineers for 2013-2014. “It’s a great way for girls to see what they could be interested in within different engineering fields.”

Another organization is the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), which focuses heavily on service projects that provide opportunities for construction engineering students to gain practical experience in their field.

During this past year’s Thanksgiving and spring breaks, many AGC members traveled to eastern Tennessee to repair homes devastated by a storm.

“Beginning this last August [of 2012], they received a big thunderstorm,” said Zach Mitchell, AGC field trip coordinator in 2012-2013. “They got 6 and a half inches of rain in 45 minutes. It knocked a lot of homes off of their foundation.”

After the completion of the two trips, seven houses were “dried-in.”

“That’s where windows and doors are in, the metal roof is on; everything except the drywall, electrical and plumbing [is completed],” said Joel Robinson, a crew leader on the spring break trip.

SWE and AGC comprise only two of the more than 40 engineering-related student organizations present at Iowa State that span every department and area of study within the College of Engineering.

Hundreds of student organizations also exist at Iowa State as a whole and many are welcoming of students of all majors.