This term has been an incredibly exciting one for CivSoc, with it all culminating with our end of year inaugural Engineering Ball – more on that later!
We kicked off the year in style with some of our more traditional events, such as the RESPECT interview help evening. This was a well-attended session and we had many successful applicants come and share their experiences of applying for placements in industry. The evening proved to be of good use and many of those who attended, particularly a large number of first years, secured placements.
It was then time for our annual Pub Golf night which saw the return of a few of our alumni, something we are hoping to build upon further next year, and ended as all good nights do; in Fab.
We have had a number of football games this term, with Carillion choosing not to play us due to their crushing defeat last time! Instead we looked to find new opponents in the shape of Law and the Army, where both matches ended in a draw. Our continued rivalry with MechSoc is of course still on-going, but we sadly suffered a 3-0 defeat to them this term. We are looking to secure funding towards a new kit so if you are interested, please get in touch!
This year, to celebrate International Women’s Day CivSoc teamed up with WISE to put on an event in collaboration with CH2M and the Institution of Civil Engineers, and hold a discussion the role of women’s networks and equality, diversity and inclusion groups in the 21st century. The event led to many interesting discussions and points of view from both female and male attendees. Thank you to alumnus Mark Hipwell from CH2M for hosting the event!
The beginning of March saw us electing in a new committee, with current President Beth McGoff stepping down to Vice-President and current Treasurer Alex Hoyle taking her stepping up to take the reigns. Joshua Fletcher has retained his position as Social Secretary alongside new committee member Thomas McGeoch. Sarah Jackson has taken up the role of Industrial Liaison and our First Year Reps, Elliot Keen and Naomi Addy have taken up roles as Secretary and Treasurer respectively. James Macdonald is returning to the committee after a year of absence as our new Sports Secretary. This means we have some departing committee members in Ekaterina Kuznetsova, Phillip Morgan, David Thomas and Tim Metcalfe who will all be graduating this year. We would like to thank them all for their dedication to CivSoc in this past year, and for some of them over the past few years, without them CivSoc would not be what it is today!
On to our most exciting news now…the Engineering Spring Ball! This was run as a collaboration with the societies from Mechanical and Electrical Engineering to celebrate the new School of Engineering. CivSoc had a strong turnout to the event which was held at Birmingham Botanical Gardens and featured a prosecco reception, string quartet, sit down dinner and DJ into the early hours. This is hopefully only the first of many Engineering Balls, with such high demand ticket sales sold out in just 3 days and all who attended only have praise towards the event. Thank you to our Social Secs Sarah and Josh, as well as the EESE and MechSoc committees for helping to organise such a tremendous event
Next term we look forward to the much favoured EPS Societies’ Awards! If you would like to nominate us for anything as a society or for an individual contribution please please do!
Beth McGoff
Outgoing President 2016-17