By Mary Hallal
The Society of Arab American Engineers (SAAE) aims to empower Middle
Eastern and North African (MENA) and non-MENA engineering students and
form a tight-knit community through a variety of personal and professional
development opportunities. We foster a safe environment for students, faculty,
and staff to inspire and uplift one another through engineering pursuits and
beyond. As a student-run organization that just started in January of 2025,
one of our biggest goals is to expand the membership of our club. In order to
do this, we try to host events that are appealing to both engineering students
and non-engineering students alike that will gather the greater Arab
community. Our project was to host an ice skating event that was open to all
members of SAAE, the Arab Student Association, and anyone else who
wanted to join.
On April 2nd at 10pm, SAAE hosted an ice skating social at the Yost Ice
Arena. This event was planned a few weeks in advance with the hope of
bringing at least 30-40 members of the two organizations together for a fun
night of ice skating. The planning included creating an RSVP that was pushed
out to many group chats, social media pages, and advertised via word of
mouth. The RSVP was attached to a flyer that was getting circulated as well.
Overall, our marketing efforts were incredibly successful as we exceeded our
expectations in interested members – totaling to 93 RSVPs. This number
helped us decide how much food to bring to the venue.
One problem we encountered that was out of our control was the weather.
Although there was a high number of RSVPs, stormy weather lowered the
expected attendance to around 60 people, instead of 93. Despite this, the
turnout still exceeded our original expectations and we were able to enjoy the
event. Since Yost Ice Arena is far south of the main campus, we could look to
create a shuttling/carpool system for next year, if we were to host this event
again. This can allow more people to come to our event if the weather causes
them to cancel.
This event was planned by the executive board of SAAE, and we each were
able to develop leadership skills showcased in the BLI Habits. One skill we strengthened was inclusivity. Opening this event to the greater Arab
community and beyond allowed interactions between people who may not
have met/spoken otherwise. Providing this social setting increased these
connections and promoted new friendships. This skill will be used to develop
future events that can attract more than just engineering students to our club.
It also allowed us to “Build a Team”, another BLI Habit. The event
acknowledged that leadership is a social activity, and having members of our
board use their different strengths to best executive this event helped our
vision come to life.
Overall, this event was very successful in gathering a large community of
students looking to have fun and meet new people in a relaxed setting. This
was made possible due to the members and executive board of SAAE who
helped plan the event, Yost for allowing us to rent out their rink, and BLI for
providing us with an opportunity to make this
