Student Technology Council

The Student Technology Council (STC) is a group of students, selected by their department heads from each department in the College of Engineering. They review hardware and software for use and inclusion in the engineering curriculum, specifically the freshman year, and collaborate with both administrators and the Student Engineers Council (SEC) to determine technology requirements and uses within College courses.

Mission

The Student Technology Council exists to demonstrate and advocate the uses of cutting edge technology for students and faculty.

By exposing these groups to the latest in research, technology, and company innovations we hope to spark interest and advancement in all engineering fields for mutual enrichment and the evolution of society.

History

The STC began in 2004 when Dr. Glenda Scales (the Associate Dean for International Programs and Information Technology) asked a group of interested and committed students to explore the possibility of integrating Apple's Powerbook laptops into the Virginia Tech engineering curriculum. Then, as now, the College of Engineering required a Windows PC; Dr. Scales tasked the students with determining whether virtualization tools, such as Virtual PC, could run programs like Autodesk Inventor and ALICE well enough for a student to use in his classes. The first group, which had no name, after much debate and testing, answered that question affirmatively.

These first students, along with Dr. Scales, realized that new technology would become available rapidly, and that students needed a way to give input to the administrators overseeing the technology requirements for freshmen and the software and hardware used in classrooms. Therefore, in the fall of 2005, the Student Technology Council was first formed. The original STC consisted of several students from the original team, and some of those students served for four years after that.

The Council

2008

2007

2006