Dear AOC student members and friends:

On behalf of the 2009-2010 Student Activity Committee (SAC) of the Association of Overseas Chinese Agricultural, Biological and Food Engineers (AOC), we are writing to welcome all of you to our community.

AOC is a professional organization of more than a hundred members from all over the world. The regular members are composed of university faculty members, post graduated research associates, and professionals working in government agencies, research institutes and industry. The most important to us, the organization also embraces student members. Its major objective is to promote information exchange and networking among agricultural, biological, and food engineers of Chinese origin worldwide.

As we all know, overseas Chinese students have probably formed the largest group among the international students in almost every major university in the US and Canada. However, we are not well connected across universities. Sometimes, our old friends, old classmates may have been studying and living in our area, but we just do not know it.

Currently, there are hundreds of Chinese students working in Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the North America. We strongly felt that there is a need to connect all these colleagues together and build up a community of our own to get acquainted, to communicate, and to share happiness and hardship with each other. We will devote ourselves to helping you for future professional development and providing you with the information you are interested. With more than fifty faculty members and one hundred students working in this area, we believe it is a tremendous resource for each of us if we can effectively integrate and distribute useful information in a timely manner.

In order to promote communication and connection, we have developed a mail list ( http://www.aoc-web.org/student/joinus.htm#2) which will be used as a platform for news distribution and information exchange. By registering as a student member, you can post messages on it. You can ask professional questions, post the resume for job searching, share information such as hotel room sharing during conference and more.

SAC has been interconnected with other committees within AOC. One of the missions of the Professional Development and Awards Committee of AOC is to establish annual awards to honor student members (http://www.aoc-web.org/student/awards.htm). We are also planning to hold workshops and to share the experiences in succeeding professional career through Internet. Information provided by the these professionals, such as report and resume writing, interview preparation, and job searching, will be particularly helpful to those Chinese students, who will step into their career life in the near future (http://www.aoc-web.org/student/successstory.htm).

Working closely with the AOC Executive Board, the SAC will continuously represent all student members' interests and will try to organize events better serving your needs. Meanwhile, we need the support of all of you. This is an open community and we sincerely welcome you to join us and give us suggestions! With your valuable support, we are confident to better serve you and to further promote communication and networking among all young engineers in agricultural and biological engineering.

We sincerely invite you to join us as a regular student member. You can follow the instruction here (http://www.aoc-web.org/student/joinus.htm). If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us via email (student.aoc@gmail.com ).

Best regards,

Sincerely,

Student Activity Committee of AOC

07/31/09