Engineering Student Organizations

Starting an Engineering Student Organization

Whether your interest is social, professional or service-oriented, organizing an engineering student group can be an enjoyable and rewarding part of your educational experience. This document has been compiled to help student leaders find and use student-organization resources. If you have questions, comments, or corrections to this guide, please email the Engineering Webmaster.

Policies

All student organizations at NC State are governed by the university's Policies, Regulations and Rules. The Student Organization Resource Center (SORC, or SOURCE) has Permits, Forms, and Policies that pertain specifically to student organizations. The regulatory body for student organizations in the College of Engineering is the Engineers' Council (E-Council).

Creating a Constitution

To achieve official status, a student organization in the College of Engineering is required to have a formal document (a constitution) that describes how it will conduct business. The constitution must be submitted to the SORC along with an organization information sheet. The Student Organization Resource Center has a sample constitution to use as a model.

Finding an Advisor

While SORC does not require that a student organization have an advisor, the E-Council does. Your advisor may be a member of the faculty, staff or administration and must be in the College of Engineering. If your organization is strongly associated with a department, you can ask the departmental administration to suggest someone. Even better is if you can find an advisor who is personally interested in the aims of your organization.

Registering Your Organization

To register with SORC, you must have the following:

• Approved constitution
• Completed organization registration sheet (download front page, download back page)
• President and at least three other student officers

To register with E-Council, you must:

1. Register with SORC
2. Petition the E-Council.

General Interest

Advertising

The Student Media of North Carolina State University has done a superb job putting together a Publicity Planning Packet for student organizations. Most student organizations use flyers posted around campus to advertise their meetings and functions. For special occasions, you may consider painting a section of the Free Expression Tunnel. If your organization will use either of these methods to spread the word, you should be sure to review the University's Poster/Painting Regulation. An online tool, Towncrier, not only makes it easy to post news on the organization's Web site but allows you to request your news be posted to appropriate Web sites across the College of Engineering. Towncrier also has a calendar tool built in, or you can set up a Google calendar.

Meetings

Regular meetings offer interested students the opportunity to see what your organization is all about. SORC has compiled a list of Space Reservation Contacts. Reservations for both indoor and outdoor space are handled by various managers and coordinators on campus.

Special Functions

The University has special rules for Outdoor Assemblies, Parades and other public use of facilities. There are also off-campus resources if your group decides to have a special meeting or social event, see Raleigh Parks and Facilities.

Finding Funding

NC State Student Senate

The Student Senate funds recognized student organizations at NC State each semester. Consult their online application, review and voting process.

Engineers' Council

The Engineers' Council funds recognized undergraduate student groups in the College of Engineering each semester, see their Finance Appropriations information.

Other Sources

Student organizations can raise money through collecting dues, donations and other fund-raising activities. Before beginning any fund-raising activities, organizations should review the Solicitation, Assemblies and Public Addresses Regulation and the regulations concerning Raffles.

Technology, Tools and Time

Mailing Lists

Student organizations that are registered and in good standing with the Student Organization Resource Center (http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/sorc/) may obtain lists. These include clubs, fraternities and sororities, both honor and social.

For a student organization, the list request form must be submitted by its president or faculty advisor. This person must be the primary owner of the list. Secondary list owners can be students. Any student group can get its own mailing list. Before applying for a list, you will want to consider the following:

• All lists must be renewed on an annual basis. List owners will be sent a renewal notice in January and reminders in February.
• Each list owner will have at least 30 days to renew the list.
• List census day is typically Feb 14th - commonly known as the great list massacre. The exact day will be listed in the notification emails.
• If the list owner is unresponsive, the list will be deactivated and deleted on census day. If you are a list owner who is graduating, please make sure to transfer the list to another member.

To create a list, fill out the Email List Request Form on NCSU's MajorDomo site. Select the bolded item for the following fields:

• Primary owner's affiliation: Engineering
• How would you categorize your list?: Student Organizations

Get a Computer

The Office of Information Technology runs a computer distribution system for student organizations. Student organizations can get a free computer by filling out a Surplus Workstation Request for an NC State Student Organization.

Get Web Space

We recommend that you host your student organization in Eos Web space provided free by the College of Engineering. Check the Organizations page to see if the organization Web site already exists under http://students.engr.ncsu.edu/. If not, contact engr-webmaster@ncsu.edu and request it. Include the faculty sponsor and the Unity IDs of all who need access.

Space in Eos is PHP-enabled, and you can also request a MySQL database. You can use our recommended Web tools and also use/embed Google tools in your site. Contact engr-webmaster@ncsu.edu for help with setting up Google tools. The college webmaster will request a Google site using a particular naming convention and email account so that the site can be easily transferred to new officers and student webmasters each year.