You may be wondering who are the Notorious Nine. Well, they are Ashton Harper, Brandi Tregre, Alex Davis, Christin Taylor, Daniel Solomon, Sergelynn Francois, Dena Wiltz, Olumide Aruwajoye, and Rashadatou Abidatou. These people were impacted by the conference one way or another considering that four out of nine were part of either the Regional Executive Board or the National Executive Board. With Brandi Tregre, Ashton Harper, Christin Taylor and Daniel Solomon, they were able to make this conference a success for 2004-2005 National Convention.

Talking to all eight members at the Conference, they had to agree that this was the best Conference yet. NSBE is growing rapidly not only with Engineering students but with Business, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Math, Biology, Chemistry and Physics students. The National Society of Black Engineers has become a tavern for African – American students to excel academically, succeed professionally, and positively impact the community.

During the Spring Break 15,000 students could have flooded Florida, Hawaii, or Cozumel, instead, we decided to make it an academic Spring Break where we can enrich our minds to bigger and better things for our families, communities and ourselves.

Many different sessions that was offered to college, high school and graduate students during the 5-day and 4 night conference. For example, the main session I wanted to attend was the forum to discuss what Bill Cosby addressed to the media. There were positive, negative and some in between views. Mainly, the important thing the Honorable Carl Mack addressed (a member of the panel and also the new Executive Director of NSBE) was “to get out there even as college students and save our babies”.

What he meant was to help any child by offering after school tutoring programs, Big Brother, Big Sister programs, or even talking to a kid and express how important education is and hope that he/she will follow into your footsteps.  As African-

American it is hard for us to find a successful educated person who is either Black or live in our neighborhood and that is why it is important to give back.

For Tulane NSBE chapter, we can get a PCI chapter and hopefully get the support of the children's families and show them how important education is by going to the conference or by letting the kids know how important they are to us. Plus with Darryl (formerly a Tulane Biomedical Engineering student) being the National PCI Chair we can find tremendous support in this program.

For the Notorious Nine, we are so happy that Ashton Harper is the 2005-2006 NSBE Region 5 Chairperson. We all know that Ashton, they will know that he is a leader who will implement change in Region 5 maybe even in National. We are proud of you and if ever in a bond, your chapter is here for you.

Not only did Ashton make Chairperson, we are also proud of Alex Davis who is 2005-2006 Region 5 Treasurer. Alex is also a leader who ran 2004-2005 Tulane chapter very well. With him we were able to start up have some PCI programs, receive a technology grant got laptops, and maintain an effective tutoring session every Tuesday at 6pm. We know that Alex started a stepping stone that will increase NSBE at Tulane at a whole new level each year.

Our main focus now is membership and hopefully in 2006 we can go to Pittsburgh with the Infamous Eighteen instead of the Notorious Nine.

I can go on and on about our experience in Boston, but if you want to learn more about NSBE and Boston, come out and enjoy people like yourselves at our meetings.