ASQ Pittsburgh Section Chair-elect Shankar Lakhavani, arranged for a meeting with professors from the University of Pittsburgh School of Business (Professor Pandu Tadikamalla), Industrial Engineering Department (Professor Karen Bursic) and the Statistics Department (Professor Henry Block) on November 16, 2009 at University Club; our Section Chair Matt Boyle and Cas Welch also participated in this historic meeting. The objective of the meeting was to outline the procedures for implementing an ASQ University of Pittsburgh Student Chapter with the professors. There was overall agreement with the professors, that it would be desirable to have a Student Chapter on the University of Pittsburgh campus. We expect to have our the first meeting of the ASQ Student Chapter on the University of Pittsburgh in January or February 2010.

ASQ’s plan is to conduct an Open House and also begin the formal process of petitioning the Board of Directors at the National American Society of Quality to recognize the local ASQ Student Chapter. ASQ Pittsburgh board members were extremely supportive of the formation of the Student Chapter for this outreach effort.

The Pittsburgh Section plans to provide the following Student Benefits:

• Mentoring opportunities for students
• Industry tours, students get a chance to see quality applied in a “real world” setting
• Provide experts for on-campus speaking engagements
• Lean Six Sigma up dates
• Operational Excellence
• Quality Engineering applied to “real world” applications
• Business Process Improvement
• Malcolm Baldrige overview
• ISO 9000 up dates
• Statistical applications
• Provide leads for summer jobs
• Provide leads for internships during the semesters
• Provide leads for jobs on graduation through the national ASQ database of job openings

If you are interested in learning more about the ASQ Student Chapter, or to volunteer in organizing the Chapter and mentor & lead students, please subscribe to our infrequent email notices.