Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) is pleased to inform you that Sigma chapter at Carnegie Mellon University hosted a successful national leadership conference November 7–9, 2008. Entitled “In Pursuit of Excellence: Achieving Results through Leadership and Innovation,” the conference was met with a high level of enthusiasm by all attendees. Working closely with the national office, Sigma was able to attract 150 students from 27 chapters nationwide to discuss leadership and entrepreneurial skills, playing to win in the professional world, technical challenges, and being a team player.

Thanks to the generous contributions of HKN members and corporate partners Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bose, Dynetics, Intel, NVIDIA, and Synopsys, there was no registration fee for the students to attend. For the first time, HKN also offered travel stipends to the chapters. With the financial assistance of HKN and their ECE departments, chapters unable to attend in the past participated.

The Welcome Reception Friday evening provided a networking opportunity for HKN members as well as industry representatives. Saturday was filled with keynote addresses and panels from distinguished speakers such as Glen Meakem of Meakem Becker Venture Capital; Raj Rajkumar and Red Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University; Joseph Havrilla of MEDRAD; Ron Hodge of Booz Allen Hamilton; Greg Lester of Dynetics; Jane Rudolph of Lockheed Martin; and Mark Kryder, formerly with Seagate Technology.

A conference highlight was the opportunity to see “The Boss,” the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge winner. CMU’s Red Team—led by Red Whittaker, who gave the conference’s luncheon keynote—developed the completely autonomous vehicle and beat out 11 other competitors in the race for time and safety. The vehicles are run by GPS coordinates through a pre-planned urban course and programmed to handle a variety of situations, including traffic, stop signs, and detours. Relating the successes and failures leading up to the winning design, Whittaker detailed what it takes to be a winner and how to remain optimistic in the face of adversity in order to reach a goal.

Finally, Sunday morning Dr. Bruce Eisenstein, HKN national president, led a discussion among the students regarding the future of HKN and the pending merger with IEEE. In view of the recent economic troubles and the decline in ECE graduation rates, HKN needs to find new avenues to reach out to the student and professional members. The students were enthusiastic and passionate about what they could do to help the organization and each other.

Congratulations to Sigma chapter on a successful conference. For more information about supporting, hosting, or attending a student conference, contact the headquarters office at info@hkn.org. For the conference agenda and more information about Eta Kappa Nu, please visit www.hkn.org.