ASHRAE San Joaquin - Home

Message from Justin Fortmeyer

Hello from you incoming president. I hope you are enjoying your summer vacations. I am too, which is why I am only writing a brief hello to those of you who are peeking at our wonderful website for news. Check out the various new info and I will see you on September 3rd for lunch and September 25th for our big fundraiser- the Golf Tournament.
Jim Orr

Message from Justin Fortmeyer

Since this month is our annual Student Day Tour, I want to take a few moments to outline what our chapter is doing in conjunction with the Fresno State Mechanical Engineering Department to help ensure the future health of the HVAC&R industry in the Central Valley. First, our chapter has taken an active roll in helping coordinate tours for the students in the Fresno State HVAC class. The class is an elective with an enrollment of approximately 8-10 students. One of the activities in which they participate is tours of projects and/or facilities around the valley that contain equipment, products or applications that are relevant to HVAC&R. Tours have been and will be hosted by Lawrence Nye Anderson and Associates, New England Sheet Metal, RF McDonald, Taylor Teter Partnership and Patton Air Conditioning, just to name a few.

Second, several of our chapter members are active participants on the Fresno State Mechanical Engineering Advisory Board. They meet regularly throughout the year and assist the school in a number of ways. One of the major accomplishments our members have shared with the Board are significant financial gifts to assist the school in hiring the best and brightest mechanical engineering instructors that otherwise would go elsewhere. A couple of other important ongoing efforts are the construction of a new state-of-the-art HVAC&R lab on campus and jump-starting an engineering magnet program at Hoover High School in Fresno. Many of these initiatives are made possible not only with investments of time, but with generous financial donations from many of our chapter members.

Third, did you know that last year our chapter donated $3,000 to Fresno State for the purchasing of computer equipment for the new HVAC lab mentioned above? Thanks to generous gifts by many of you, we have been able to meet our commitments to HVAC&R to help fund ASHRAE Society research AND participate in HVAC&R research and student education at the local level. Finally, we are working with the Fresno State Mechanical Engineering Department to establish a student chapter of ASHRAE on campus. This will help educate and encourage students on campus who may have an interest in HVAC&R and energy-related engineering careers. A couple of the high points thus far:

(1) One of the requirements of the aforementioned HVAC class is to become a student member of ASHRAE. This is a great foundation on which to build an active student chapter.
(2) We can help grow and nurture the chapter by providing joint meetings, guest lecturers, and other support, such as printed materials, company and factory tours, or even job-shadowing. Much of this can be accomplished through existing society channels and will cost very little if anything to implement.

I hope this helps give you an idea of just some of the things our chapter is doing to support the future of our industry locally. This will no-doubt lead to a larger pool of interested, educated and equipped engineers-in-training from which to choose when filling entry-level positions in our companies.