Do you salivate for subways? Are you awestruck by airports? Are you hysterical for highways?
If so, then chances are that you love transportation—and Cal ITE is the club for you!
Cal ITE is the UC Berkeley student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), an “international educational and scientific association of transportation professionals”. We seek to expose undergraduate students to the transportation field and encourage professional development.
We believe that mobility needs, economic inequality, safety issues, sustainability concerns, and quality-of-life issues can be addressed through the transportation industry. We hope to pique students’ interest in the field and foster the next generation of talented people who, together, will be solving these issues, creating better communities, and improving quality of life for all through transportation.
Every semester, Cal ITE hosts open general meetings where students can meet professionals and learn more about current transportation-related topics.
Last semester, we held 3 meetings featuring speakers such as Adam Dankberg from Kimley-Horn, Rodney Pimentel from Parsons Corporation and Matthew Christensen from the Transportation Sustainability Research Center here in Berkeley. They talked about their work on, respectively, the under-construction BART extension to Silicon Valley, the East Bay Bus Rapid Transit project currently being designed and built in Oakland, and shared-use mobility systems, such as BikeShare and ZipCar.
This past February, 4 Cal ITE members attended the Western ITE Student Leadership Summit at Sacramento State. At this conference, students from 5 states and 16 universities had the opportunity to meet and learn from distinguished professionals and leaders in the transportation field, build connections with one another, and compete together in a simulated Complete Streets road design competition.
It was a very rewarding experience for those who attended. In the future, Cal ITE hopes to attend more conferences such as the upcoming ITE Western Annual Conference in Las Vegas.
For spring 2015, Cal ITE is planning 2 general meetings. The first meeting will feature Kimberly Leung from San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to talk about the SF Central Subway project. We are also planning a field trip to tour the Caltrans Traffic Management Center in Oakland.
And along with all these activities, we promote the club, encourage student registration in ITE, and offer a student-professional mentor program in collaboration with the SF Bay Area ITE chapter.
If you or anyone you know is interested in joining Cal ITE or attending our activities, please visit our web site for more information.
Go Cal ITE!
Go Bears!