March 2006 ISSUE

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Mark Skovmose

STUDENT COLUMNS

Pi Throw is a
Lip-Licking Success

BY MARK SKOVMOSE
University of Calgary
Student Contributor (Engineering)

It may be unusual for 50 students to be held completely captive by their professor on a Friday afternoon. But the Pi Throw kickoff event wasn’t your usual Friday class.
Four professors and a number of department student society presidents vied against each other to avoid a pie in the face. Garbage bags lined the floor, setting the stage for the act to follow as two donation bins circulated.

CLASS DISCIPLINE Dr. Ernest Enns, a professor of mathematics at the U of C, demonstrates to one of his students, Jeff Devetten, exactly what happens if you disrupt his lecture. Actually, the pie-in-the-face was part of the annual Pi Throw for charity.

The choice was simple: who do you want pied? The professors or the presidents?

The professors desperately sought donations to match the student contributions but couldn’t overcome. As the contest was slightly biased, the presidents, good sports all, agreed to take pies along with the professors.
The kickoff event was a new element to Pi Throw Week, and a large stack of orders was ready to go when the week began.

With 530 pies delivered over the three days, we reached our goal of raising $5,230 for the Calgary Urban Project Society. Thank you to all the volunteers who made this event a success.

Open House Volunteers Needed
Spring is loaded with other volunteer opportunities, including Open House. Prospective high school students have the chance to experience engineering at the university first-hand.

Tours of the departments and teams, mixed with an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers, make for a great day. If you are or know a student interested in discovering what engineering involves, contact Jennifer Van Es at jenn.vanes@ucalgary.ca for more information.

Industry and Us
The University of Calgary Engineering Students’ Society is proud to host the first-annual Third and Fourth Year Dinner, an event for hundreds of engineering students to build industry relationships as they near graduation. Career Services will offer advice to the new graduates; professors and students are presented awards for excellence; and everyone enjoys a four-course meal and a chance to network.

We hope this event to soar in the same regard as the First and Second Year Dinner, a highly successful event run over the last 36 years.

ESS would like to thank all our sponsors for both these events. Without sponsorship from industry, neither of these would exist.