On November 16, 2019, Purdue University’s ASME student executive board arrived on the Illinois campus for an inaugural ASME Midwestern Summit. The student leaders of the two branches came together to talk about their organizations and collaborate on future ways to improve the student experience.

After connecting with the president of Purdue’s branch at an internship, UIUC president and MechSE senior Chris Chong reached out to start the partnership.

“We really wanted to focus on expanding and improving ASME this year,” Chong said. “One of the main ways we wanted to do that was by extending ASME’s reach externally and internally. Increasing ASME’s reach externally meant starting to collaborate with other branches in ASME, specifically in the Midwest.”

After Purdue presented on their branch, the Illinois leaders identified that they wanted to improve their ASME branch by incorporating more design teams. At Purdue, they have school specific design teams as well as teams created by individual student ideas. The Illinois branch would like to follow in their footsteps to increase member interest and membership value.

After the success of this first summit, the Illinois executive board will look to expand further and increase their connections with branches across the Midwest.

“We plan to eventually do similar events other schools like Wisconsin, OSU, and Minnesota depending on the ASME contacts from other executive board members,” Chong said.  “The hope is that eventually we can host a large ASME Midwest Conference for all Midwest or Big Ten schools to come together, share knowledge, and plan big events. That may be awhile off, but this is at least a start!”