Well, here it is.
Last Spring, Felipe and I independently decided that ITE needed a blog-based website to better inform our members on upcoming events, to share our ideas with each other, and to show the larger community what we were doing here at Georgia Tech. We each campaigned on the idea in the spring election, and the idea has generated lots of interest in our summer discussions.
This website and blog has three major audiences. First and foremost are the students of the Georgia Tech ITE chapter. We hope that all students will subscribe to the RSS feed for this site, and participate in the discussion we generate. This promises to be an exciting year in transportation, as Congress works on a new surface transportation authorization package to replace SAFETEA-LU, GDOT deploys congestion pricing on I-85, and the Atlanta Regional commission continues work on the Atlanta Streetcar planning and design. We will also maintain a list of scholarships (and scholarship winners) available to transportation students, and post reminders about deadlines.
The second audience for this website is students who are considering joining the transportation systems engineering program at Georgia Tech. We will be writing about living in Atlanta from the graduate student’s perspective, and our officers will make themselves available to answer unsolicited questions about the program and the Institute.
The third audience is the wider transportation community. We will use this website to inform our friends at Georgia ITE of our activities, as well as our contacts at state agencies and private firms. We also will reach out to the ITE chapters at peer universities to stay in touch with each other’s research and activities.
This ought to be an excellent year for ITE @ GT, and we hope the blog will be an important part of our success.