This February, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Eta Kappa Nu honors society awarded UCLA’s Eta Kappa Nu chapter an Outstanding Chapter Award for the 11th year in a row.
The award was for the work UCLA’s chapter completed during the 2014-2015 academic year.
IEEE-HKN is an international honors society dedicated to recognizing and encouraging individual excellence in the field of electrical and electronics engineering. The honors society was founded in 1904 and has over 180 chapters. The Greek letters of its name, HKN, come from the Greek word ΗΛΕΚΤΡΟΝ which is pronounced “elekron” and is the basis for the English words for electricity and electron.
The Iota Gamma chapter of HKN has existed at UCLA since 1984. In their announcement of the 22 chapters that were given the award, the IEEE-HKN Board of Governors stated that the award was for recognizing excellence in chapter administration and programs.
Albert Liu, this year’s chapter president, said that the chapter works to provide services that extend to the entire electrical engineering and computer science undergraduate community at UCLA. The chapter acceptant the top performing students from computer science and engineering (CSE) and electrical engineering (EE) majors.
Two of the main services that Iota Gamma provides students with are regular tutoring hours and mentorship events. Chapter members tutor students from 10am to 5pm every week day in Engineering IV. Some of the events that they coordinate are class planning workshops, panels with graduate students on applying to graduate school and lunches students can have with professors.
Last school year, Liu helped coordinate the chapter’s second Emerge Fair. This event brought start-up companies to campus for students and alumni to network with. There were 13 companies and over 300 students and alumni in attendance which was an increase from the previous year’s fair.
Gary Yeung, an electrical engineering PhD student and alumni of the Iota Gamma chapter, said that he liked how members of the honors society really get to know each other well.
Participating in the honors society was like being a part of a big family Cheuk Yu, a fourth year electrical engineering student and previous board member the Iota Gamma chapter, said.
“It was fun being an officer,” he added. “I’m glad about the chapter award.”