Last November, the North Jersey Local Section decided to try out a new way of attracting Young Professionals to get them more involved: hosting a ‘Happy Hour’ event. By simply advertising via email and Facebook that the local section was sponsoring a happy hour where they would be providing the appetizers, we were able to attract 17 chemical engineers who had not previously been involved with the local section. After the success of our November happy hour, it was an easy decision to make this an ongoing event. Since then, we’ve hosted six happy hours typically on the last Thursday of the month for young professionals (and the young at heart) and have had participation from over 50 local chemical engineers. In order to reach out to as many people as possible, the happy hours rotate between Jersey City, Morristown, and New Brunswick, NJ.
With each event costing the local section on average about $75 in appetizers, this has been a low cost way of letting young professionals know what the North Jersey Local Section is all about. It also has given them a more relaxed way of getting to know other members, making attending a dinner meeting a bit less intimidating. Plus everyone who attends gets a chance to chat about their jobs, seek advice from other chemical engineers, and let the local section’s Board know about what type of topics they would like to hear about at future dinner meetings. One attendee was quoted as saying, "The YP happy hours have been relaxing events where I met engineers from the local section, both young and experienced. I really enjoyed gaining valuable career insight, discussing my ideas, and sharing a few beers with new friends." Chair Elect Bob Rossi added “The monthly YP events have proven to be an excellent venue to engage younger members who can potentially infuse new thinking into a long-established local section. We have already seen some increased regular dinner meeting attendance due to the YP events.”
As part of its ongoing marketing efforts, the North Jersey Local Section intends to continue to host Young Professional and Student Chapter events with a variety of themes to share the benefits of AIChE and to encourage active membership. A few attendees inquired about deeper involvement in the section, which we hope leads to participation in section committees. Director Pete Sibilski summarized by stating, “The Young Professional Happy Hours have become a pleasantly informal way of meeting the younger members of AIChE, and introducing them to the Section, and those of us who run it. This is an effective way of ‘breaking the ice’ with those members in order to make them more comfortable with the group and more likely to attend other events; and hopefully, become generally more involved with the Section.
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