The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers Student Organization returned to the University of Wyoming for the first time in several years yesterday at 5:30 p.m. in Engineering building room 3070.
ASHRAE is an international voluntary organization for those interested in heating, refrigeration and air conditioning. It provides opportunities to further develop the technology in this field.
Dr. Wang and the club’s members saw a gap in student organizations in their field, so they founded the local chapter and RSO on campus to connect students with the professional organization.
“It’s kind of in the middle of the architectural and engineering society,” Vice President Tobias Davis said. “There’s a broader architectural RSO, and ASME, and ones for other purposes like the Society of Women Engineers, but this is one specifically connect to an already existing organization. It’s a lot more focused and I think it will be a lot more helpful.”
Today’s meeting, as the RSO’s first, was about organizing the events and getting their members informed. The ASHRAE Student Organization was a formerly active organization that is working on getting started again.
“We currently have the officers and one other person because we are establishing it this semester. It was active a couple years ago and Dr. Wang, one of the professors here on campus was trying to get it set back up so we are just getting started again on campus,” Davis said.
The ASHRAE Student Organization already has events in the pipeline where they will go on tours of facilities, including the University’s computer system, HVAC systems and the steam-producing central energy plant.
“A lot of the university runs on steam supply and that’s something that a lot of people don’t know about,” Davis.
Students looking to make professional connections will find that through the ASHRAE RSO that they will have opportunities to make direct connections in this field.
“Having this one-on-one connection, it lets people know that if they come see students with this student group they know exactly what qualifications they are going to find, which I think is really a benefit,” Davis said.
Davis jokingly wants to let students know that they are working very hard to make sure their members get more than pizza at their meetings “we want to treat our members to something sweet.”
