News From Student Chapters

Canada – Laval University Student Chapter Update
Written by Bernard Dery

A Brief Update of Recent Chapter Activities:
The student chapter organized two industrial visits in a day and invited Montréal's Polytechnique Student Chapter to participate. Our first visit was at EXFO, a Quebec-city based company that is a world leader in telecom (mainly tests and evaluation of networks). They have around 600 employees in Quebec City and a thousand around the world. We had a corporate presentation, a tour of the production floor, and a meeting with chief engineers and researchers. We then ate lunch at their facility.

Next, we went to NOI (National Optics Institute), a non-profit organization devoted to offering counseling and expert resources to its clients, by developing prototypes, designing systems, and so forth. They have approximately 1,000 employees. We again welcomed a corporate speech, followed by a tour of the installations, with multiple presentations of various prototypes developed here.

Afterwards, we brought everyone back to the University, for a "social event" at the university's pub. The chapter leaders took advantage of the opportunity to try to recruit members and people seemed interested enough. We followed by emailing reminders of the benefits of being a member of OSA, and we will take advantage of the momentum gathered that day to try to recruit more members.

Thirty-five people participated in this activity, not all members, but perhaps the membership will increase as a result! We look forward to future activities.