Well, summer is finally here and with the warm weather comes my last President's message as I hand off this responsibility to my friend Christopher Frank, P.E. I can only say it has been an honor serving this past fiscal year as your FES central Florida chapter president. To my board members, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting every initiative that was implemented successfully this year. Besides being board members all of you were more than friends when I needed something. I am very proud of all of you and have no doubt the Central Florida chapter is in great hands as we move into this fiscal year. To Eric McAra, P.E. our state director, thanks for being a great mentor and showing great leadership. You have been a great friend, and I could always count on you when I needed advice or a way to get our goals achieved. I am glad we have such a great state director within our chapter that will continue to work with all of us, I truly appreciate all you did. To our Regional director Ryan Blaida, P.E. thanks for your valuable insight due to all of your knowledge for working within our chapter for so many years, thanks for supporting our chapter time and time again and working closely with our board. Another person who has been instrumental to the success of our chapter is our next FES state president Charles Davis, PH.D. who invited me to be part of the board and has been a great mentor and friend throughout the years. Your valuable support and advice have been a blessing and I know you will achieve many great things for the Florida Engineering Society at the state level. Rest assure you have my and our chapter full support in the initiatives you are trying to establish this coming fiscal year.

Furthermore, our chapter has had so many great achievements such as having a successful opening year with our sponsorship program. Thanks to all of the consultants who participated in the program. Our Bowling and Golf tournament events were memorable and helped us raise funds for our MathCounts local competition and scholarships. Thanks to Victor Gallo, P.E. and Josh Nolin, P.E. and all the golf committee members for all of the hard work to make the golf tournament one of our marquee events. Our community service committee had many events where they donated their time in order to give back to our local community, thanks to Rob Best, P.E. Victor Steck, P.E. and Emmanuel Marin, P.E. for all the efforts Our K-12th committee lead by Dave Schmitt, P.E. had a phenomenal year with many events, we even added a new school by having Cristina Dos Santos, P.E. as a lead to expand this committee and reach more young kids that could become future engineers. Our MathCounts committee did an amazing job by having our local competition with a large number of local participants and help run the Florida region competition led by Stephanie Shealey, P.E. and the committee members. Our website and marketing committee was able to revamp our website and expand our marketing campaigns, thanks to Francina Gil, P.E. Angel Rivera, E.I. and Artis Dukes, E.I. for your hard work and completing these goals in such short amount of time. I also want to give a big shout out to Alexandra Jimenez and Jillian Malavet for re-establishing our UCF chapter. Both of you have done an amazing job taking on a challenge to re-establish the chapter and do many great activities besides getting new student members who will learn the mission of FES and will continue to be part of this society in the future. I am very proud of all the work you guys did and look forward to the future.

It is just amazing to see the number of committee members who volunteer their time in order to run all of these events / tasks. To each of you I can only say I am grateful to have been able to work alongside each of you and very appreciative of all of your efforts to work with our chapter.

Additionally, I want to make sure I don't forget to mention our established efforts to have multiple joint events with other societies such as ASHE and ASCE. Thanks to Laura Campos, P.E. and the rest of the ASHE board for teaming up with us in multiple events and supporting each of our events and initiatives. Additionally, I want to thank ASCE for also establishing a partnership with our chapter and inviting us to be part of the Engineering week events and banquet, we look forward to next year.

Finally, to all of our members who supported each of our events and initiatives. I am very pleased with your support, without it none of our achievements would've been possible. I continue to encourage each of you to take the opportunity and be more active within the chapter and one of the committees. We need your help to encourage the new generation of engineers to grow our chapter and move forward our mission which supports engineering education, advocates licensure, promotes the ethical and competent practice of engineering, enhances the image and well-being of all engineers in the state of Florida, and furthers the public’s knowledge and understanding of the importance of the profession. 

Thank you!

Alfredo Rodriguez, P.E.

Below you will find a summary of all of our chapter events which took place after my last president's message. I hope you enjoy this summary, and it motivates you to join one of our committees. If interested to receive more information on how to be part of one of the committees just reply to this email.

Our community service committee had an event in March to serve at the Ronald McDonald house by cooking a meal for the kids that receive treatment in the nearby hospital. This is an event that our committee had been planning for a long time but due to Covid-19 shutdown it had to be postponed. It is awesome to see how engineers can come together to serve our community and give back love and hope.

Our committee is planning on having this event again in the 2024 fall. They are also looking for other members to join this committee and be able to do many other events within our community. If you like to receive more information please reply back to this email and let me know you are interested in joining this great group.

In March I was able to serve at the State MATHCOUNTS competition and had a great time. This is a great opportunity to serve and see our state students who excel in Math.

If you were not aware one of our Florida students Benjamin Jiang won the national competition. Thanks to Stephanie Shealey and the committee members who have been serving in this committee for many years. They also need more volunteers in order to continue supporting this great event, if you are interested in getting involve dont hesitate to reach out.

In April we had our yearly golf tournament and it was a well attended event with over 30 teams participating. Thanks to all the sponsors and consultant partners who participated in this event which supports our funding for our local scholarships. Click on the button below for all the pictures of the event posted in our website,

In May our chapter held the target vision zero luncheon at the Turnpike headquarters. We had a great panel consisting of Loreen Bobo from District 5, Eric Gordin from the Turnpike, Jamison Edwards from CFX, Humberto Caballero from Orange County and Isai Chavez from Osceola County. Thanks to all the panelists for participating in this event and providing great insight on what is being done in the Central Florida area to reach the target zero. Thanks to our very own Nate Wilbur and Clint Pletzer for planning and serving as moderators of this event.

To our annual sponsors, I don't have enough words to express our gratitude for your support to join the sponsorship program. Due to your support, we were able to raise the total amount of our scholarships and add a new scholarship. We were able to support our MathCounts committee with all expenses and separate additional funding for this upcoming fiscal year. Without your support some of our initiatives would've been impossible to achieve. Thanks, and we look forward having your support once again.