The UT engineering community is forming ties this week through a series of events and competitions, collectively called Engineers Week, which occurs annually. 

The Student Engineering Council hosts E-Week, a national event, which at UT consists of multiple competitions held by various engineering societies. The council is an umbrella organization which represents the engineering societies within the Senate of College Councils.

Events hosted Monday included foosball games, a marshmallow toss and a game of musical chairs.

Individual societies, such as the Engineering Chamber Orchestra, finance their event or make sure it’s low-cost, EChO member Melanie Kong said. EChO hosted a musical chairs competition Monday afternoon that drew a noisy crowd in the mechanical engineering building.

“For us, this was very low cost,” Kong said. “We just had to make sure we had the room reserved.”

Council member Albert Chen, who attended Engineering Chamber Orchestra’s musical chairs event, said that while he knew many of the people at the event, he still values E-Week.

“I am a part of SEC, so I do know a lot of the people here, but I did also see people that I haven’t seen in a long time,” Chen said. “With biomedical engineering, we spend a lot of time with people in the same major. But E-Week is just a good time; we set aside some time to see people we haven’t seen in a long time.”

While E-Week is held annually, this year the council focused on publicizing the event through different avenues to increase participation, E-Week co-chair Baha Eren said.

“We realize that a lot of engineers don’t like to get involved in community stuff,” Eren said. “We publicized through more social media, such as Facebook, Twitter. Actually, it’s proven to be pretty successful so far.”

The council and a corporate supporter — this year, it’s BASF — pay for the larger events of E-Week, such as the banquet and the Dr. Ramshorn Competition, a co-ed pageant, according to Farzad Yousefi, the council’s vice president of finance. 

For Eric Lucha, pageant contestant and electrical engineering senior, E-Week and the pageant are chances to prove himself, even if the pageant is a “silly” event. 

“More than anything though, this pageant is a way of separating the best looking from the good looking,” Lucha said. “Some might say that’s shallow. I say I don’t know what that means.”

The article was updated after its original posting. BASF is the council's corporate supporter this year.