Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1098973
40 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2019 in the aerospace industry and with defense contractors, which are areas I've been trying to look into for quite some time. I was able to ask Iris a lot of questions about leadership and the industry. During her talk, "Failure to Succeed," I also asked her how to handle problems with leadership while working with teams on big projects. I can take the information I gained from those interactions back to the student branch. Now, when I members are thinking about whether or not to renew their membership, I can say "With an IEEE membership, you gain access to these kinds of industry professionals." Also, there are all of these sections and sides of IEEE. We have a couple of branch sections at Cal Poly. But since I've been here, I've talked to Cal Poly members from five or six different societies that I hadn't even heard of TEMS, for instance, dedicated to manage - ment at IEEE. Nolan: What's one thing from this conference that will be immediately applicable for you when you go back to campus? Joe: I'm a member of the student government at my university. When I go back, I'll represent a whole bunch of students—about 6,000 students from Cal Poly's College of Engineering. I'll be able to take back what I learned in my conversation with Iris, for instance, as well as some of the conversations I had during breakout meetings. For example, there was a talk on ethics in large organizations. After listen- ing to the speaker, I'm better able to take that and practice it in my role in student government. Now, as far as my student branch goes, I can go back and tell the other members what it's like to be at a conference, which is a major benefit for elec- trical engineering. In addition, I can share that there are numer- ous students at IEEE from different universities who also want to connect. We've been work- ing on building bigger, stronger relationships with the University of California, San Diego, for instance. There's even the potential to collaborate with other IEEE members, such as putting together a hackathon. Nolan: That's a great idea. You're touching on the realization that when the IEEE talks about this as your tribe, and your tribe is much larger than your school; it's national and interna- tional. Joe: Exactly. With that, Joe was off to participate in the rest of the program. As the conference wound down and moved into the Sunday morning panel discussion on "The Next Big Thing," and the group photo, it was very clear that the students and the industry leaders alike had made connections and started professional relationships that everyone could leverage in the future. After talking to the IEEE Rising Stars Conference Founder Michael Andrews about the vision and mission for this event, this all means that the 2019 edition of the conference achieved its key objectives. SMT007 Dan Schweiker presents on driving decisions through relational and rule-based ethics. Joe Sandoval