The Darrel Chong Student Activity Award

How does it work?

This award requires interested student groups to submit a description of an organized activity. The activity will be evaluated based on a number of merits and will obtain either a platinum, gold, silver, bronze or “unrated” status. This award is not competitive in nature and does not limit the number of winners to each medal. It allows the same submitted activity to be elevated to the next higher medal based on future improvements made in subsequent years.

Note: The activities that have been organized more than once will be given more consideration. The intent is to encourage consistency; spurring student branches to discover their niche and continually improve on it.

Rules and Eligibility

All IEEE Student Branches, Student Branch Chapters, Student Branch Affinity groups of Women in Engineering (WIE) are eligible for this award program. Activities organized by multiple student braches and/or chapters are also eligible. Each student group may enter as many activities as they want.  To enter your activity, simply send your written report (according to the instructions you will find below) by email to ieeegetplatinum@ieee.org, with copies to your Regional Student Activities Committee Chair (RSAC) and Regional Student Representative (RSR). Please include:

• The written report summarizing the activity (click here for award criteria)
• Any supporting documentation that will support your activity (i.e. photos, attendance lists, promotional material, etc.)
• Supporting documents from Sections and Branch Counselors are welcome
• The name of your activity and the name of the student branch(es) or student branch chapter(s) if applicable.
• The IEEE Region and Section you are in
• The name and email address from the branch chair if applicable
• The name and email address from the activity leader
• Your name and email address (if different from the above)

Note: The nominator for the award does not have to be an organizer or a member of the group. Anyone, including section officers, student branch counselors, department chairs, etc can nominate an IEEE student group as long as they can provide all supporting materials.

Also, make sure that you follow the specific submission rules.

Judging is based on the criteria outlined below. The sum of the point totals for the categories will be 100 points. If required, tie breaking will be at the discretion of the contest administrator using comments provided by the judges. All appeals and questions should be directed to the contest administrator. The decision of the contest administrator is final.  

Send completed document to Christine Eldridge in IEEE Student Services.  We look forward to seeing how creative your Student Branch can be.   

Contest Deadlines

 I: Branches submit their activity reports all year long, as the activities are finished and the reports are ready.  Judging will occur twice a year, at the Student Activities Committee (SAC) meetings. All activities submitted before 15 November will be judged in December. Activities submitted after that will be judged the following year.

II: SAC results will be announced in December and April.

 General Considerations

The beauty of this contest is that it does not limit the number of awardees and allows the students to continuously improve on the same activity to gain an improved rating in the following years. The student groups no longer compete against other student groups; the focus now is shifted to how they can further improve. The challenge is steered from external competition to internal cooperation.  There is no restriction on the number of activities submitted by one group.  Click here for the award criteria.