Colbert Lehr served as Engineering Student Body president in 2016-17. (Submitted photo)
Colbert Lehr, an electrical engineering major from Brandon, said that his time serving on the Engineering Student Body Leadership Council since his freshman year helped him decide to run for the position of ESB president. He was elected ESB president by his peers last spring and has spent the past 12 months working to better things for students in the School of Engineering.
“When I chose to run for ESB president, I had previously served on the ESB Leadership Council for two years,” he said. “I had experience planning, promoting and conducting different social events for engineering students.”
Lehr said he believes that it was his experience with events such as National Engineers Week (E-Week), the School of Engineering tailgate and Engineering Formal that helped make him the best candidate for the position.
“The ESB is not just an organization that hosts social events to help students engage and meet each other,” Lehr said. “The group is also responsible for helping to develop programs that promote career and professional development as well as representing the needs of engineering students to the engineering faculty and administration.”
Lehr organized the council into an academic committee and a social committee to help make sure all council members were involved and had a role in coordinating activities during the course of the year.
ESB Leadership Council member Jake Azbell said he appreciated Lehr’s leadership.
“Colbert is very professional when it comes to his work, which is needed to manage a group of people with varying perspectives and ideas,” he said. “He was also very detail oriented and helped make serving in the ESB an enjoyable experience.”
Since the ESB is the umbrella student organization for the School of Engineering, one of Lehr’s goals was to develop stronger relationships between the ESB and other engineering student organizations.
“Often, organizations operate independently since they are based within a specific engineering department,” Lehr said. “I attempted to remedy this by bringing leaders of student organizations together and addressing everything from collaboration on events to funding and support for schoolwide events.”
Lehr said he saw more communication between engineering organizations over the course of the year. Another goal for Lehr was to increase involvement among first-year students in the engineering school. He spoke to incoming freshmen at the annual Engineering Freshman Convocation about the opportunities to get involved in ESB and other organizations to help them acclimate to campus and meet people within the school.
Lehr also encouraged them to begin thinking about their professional career and to use resources such as visiting the School of Engineering’s career planning specialist Megan Miller.
As with many student government organizations, Lehr found it a challenge to make sure students understood the role of ESB.
“Our greatest challenge has been visibility and exposure,” he said. “Even though we host Bowling Nights, events for E-Week and the Engineering Formal, there are many students that do not readily recognize ESB or know what the group does for students.”
One success that Lehr noted was increased student attendance for events hosted by the organization. This year, the annual formal had over 300 students in attendance, surpassing previous events. He is also proud of the friendships formed within the Leadership Council since all of the students come from different engineering majors and are at different stages in their academic career from freshmen to seniors.
Lehr’s advice for future ESB presidential hopefuls is to make sure they truly want to work with a diverse group of people. He would also encourage them to listen to the quietest voice in the room when making decisions to ensure that all voices, thoughts and opinions are heard and taken into consideration. Lastly, he would advise future ESB presidents to lead by example and never require anything of anyone that they would not be willing to do themselves.
Lehr said he appreciates the generous support of Dean Alexander Cheng as well as the help and advice of ESB adviser Ryan Upshaw. He also thanks his fellow officers, Holly Pitts and Andrew Huff, for their work as well as the rest of the ESB Leadership Council.
In addition to his role as ESB president, Lehr has served on the executive committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and was selected to attend the UM PULSE Leadership Conference in 2016. He has volunteered with the FIRST Robotics Competition, Engineers Without Borders and the Leap Frog program. Additionally, he has been selected for membership in Lambda Sigma, Golden Key, Tau Beta Pi, Omicron Delta Kappa and Mortar Board honor societies.
Last summer, he interned with Raytheon in Forest and plans to return as an intern for summer 2017. He said he hopes to pursue further education in electrical engineering or in business administration.