The Engineering Council of N.C. State University held a Presidents’ Roundtable meeting Tuesday night to discuss plans for the organization’s annual E-Week.

“This is a week-long event that’s important for bringing the engineering community together,” E-Council vice president Stephane Henrion, a senior in electrical engineering, said.

For the 2009 E-Week, the Council is striving to promote the event more than previous years.

“One of the biggest changes this year is that we want to have more publicity,” Trey Warren, a sophomore in construction engineering and management and co-chair for the event, said.

As opposed to previous years, Warren noted that the upcoming E-Week will have a large-scale kickoff event.

“We‚’re just going to try to lure people in with free food and inform them that E-Week is going on,” he said.

Warren believes that having the student body involved in the event is critical to the program‚’s success.

“Everyone knows when Ag Week is going on because of all the animals in the Brickyard,” he said. “We just need to have more visuals such as a crane in the brickyard or something.”

The program typically involves a series of professional development workshops offered by the Engineering Foundation and various featured engineering alumni.

“One of the best lectures from last year, The Next Step In Your Education, helped me decide if I should go straight to work, go for my MBA, or for my master‚’s degree in engineering,” Henrion said. “The transition isn‚’t quite as simple as going from high school to college.”

Henrion believes that having alumni return to talk about their experience with the engineering field is very beneficial.

“They know how to succeed in the business world,” he said. “We get alumni that are now high-level CEO‚’s to come back and talk to current students.”

In additions to the development workshops, E-Week is also renowned for its week-long variety of fun, competitive events on the Brickyard.

“Each engineering organization is being asked to prepare an activity and run it once during the week,” Henrion said.

Last year, Wolfpack Motorsports hosted a tricycle race while Aerial Robotics organized a paper airplane competition.

“As engineers we just sit and study all day, so it‚’s good for us to get out and meet other people,” Warren said.

Henrion believes that events such as these are indeed entertaining, but are important for promoting the growth and unity of the engineering program.

“Academically, N.C. State is renowned for being an engineering school,” Henrion said. “Everyone should be proud of that fact.”