DYLAN M. HOLLIDAY
Engineering magazine allots $3,000 for Virginia Tech students
Monday, February 27, 2017 - Dylan Holliday
With the school year winding down for students across the country, senior engineering students at Virginia Tech might be catching a $3000 break from a student-run publication on campus.
For Virginia Tech engineering students, the senior design project is one final step graduation that allows them to get hands on with real experiences related to their field of study. Seniors have an opportunity to work on projects from building hybrid or formula one vehicles to innovating new technologies. Part of being able complete these projects is finding the right sponsorship and funding.
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“Senior projects are the canvas on which I can use every lesson I’ve learned over the past three-and-a-half years to paint the masterpiece that represents this chapter of my life,” senior computer science major Usman Anwar said.
BLACKSBURG, Va., Feb. 27 - This booth (located in Virginia Tech's newest engineering building, Goodwin Hall), and many more like it around campus show off a stack of Engineers' Forum magazines free to inform the public about what's going on in the world of engineering. Photo: Dylan Holliday
Fortunately for these students, Engineers’ Forum is working to provide up to $3,000 to the engineering team of their choosing for the Spring 2017 semester.
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“We just started a program where we will be giving student awards to excelling engineering-teams. We're giving $3000 total this semester,” Virginia Tech student and editor-in-chief for Engineers’ Forum, Zeyad Zeitoun said.
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“We're offering students in undergraduate teams with an engineering focus the possibility of earning an award from our organization.”
According to their website, Engineers’ Forum is a student-run, engineering-based magazine on Virginia Tech’s campus that got its start back in 1981. Since then, the magazine has grown to publishing four issues every year and printing upwards of 2,500 free copies for the university.
“I think it's important for us to exist to fill the student population in on important engineering-related projects and programs going on at the university,” Zeitoun said.
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“A lot of really big work is done here in connection with industry that we cover.”
While the publication is student-run, it doesn’t get much help from the university. In fact, Virginia Tech doesn’t fund any of the operating costs. It is all from advertisements the magazine places between its pages and on its website.
But, while operations are funded from advertisements, the university still pays back the students for their service to the engineering community.
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“All of our money comes from ad revenue,” Zeitoun said.
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“The school actually gives our writers and photographers salaries in the form of scholarships, but this is because we have invested in an endowment here.”
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​The image below is a link to the Virginia Tech Engineering: At a Glance infographic.
