Southern Regional Student Conference Review

In Clearwater, FL on April 10 and 11, the University of South Florida hosted over 400 undergraduate student AIChE members for the 2015 Southern Regional Student Conference. Despite the draw of the warm, sunny beach, students participated in events throughout the two day conference.

Friday started out with a poolside welcome mixer, which allowed students to meet each other before the conference began. Also that evening ChemE Jeopardy was held.  Georgia Institute of Technology came from behind to beat University of South Florida and Louisiana State University in the Final Jeopardy round of the ChemE Jeopardy finals.

Saturday started off after breakfast with the Chem-E-Car Poster Competition and the Paper Competition. Throughout the day the Futures Fair gave students an opportunity to meet with regional graduate schools and companies and practice their networking skills.

Chem-E-Car Competition

That afternoon was the much-anticipated Chem-E-Car Competition where 21 cars competed for five spots at the Annual Student Conference Chem-E-Car Competition. This year the University of Louisiana – Lafayette’s The Ragin’ Rougarou car took home first place.  University of Tennessee – Chattanooga’s Chem-eleon and University of Tennessee – Knoxville’s Great Big Orange Car came in a very close second and third place.

Other Chem-E-Car Competition winners included Georgia Institute of Technology’s The Stingerette and Auburn University’s New Roots in fourth and fifth place. University of Alabama – Tuscaloosa won the best team spirit during the Chem-E-Car Competition. The paper competition winners were Arthur Sloan (Auburn University) in third place, Douglas Davenport (University of Kentucky) in second place, and Dyllan Rives (Auburn University) in first place.

Next year

Next year’s Southern Regional Conference will be held at the University of Alabama – Tuscaloosa campus.

Undergraduate students can join AIChE and participate in its programs and benefits at no cost thanks to sponsorship funding. For more information on AIChE Student Programs, click here

See more pictures from the event in our Flickr album.