This year the GT Club Tennis Team qualified for Nationals. The tournament is being held April 16-18 in Surprise, AZ. They are requesting funding for the tournament entry fee and travel expenses. The team is taking three teams of eight for a total of 24 participants.

Trailblazers is an official student organization whose goal is to increase student and faculty appreciation for the outdoors through trail adventure and exploration. We have organized and are leading three Alternative Spring Break trips across the country open to all Georgia Tech students and faculty in which we will combine trail work with outdoor adventure. The first trip is expected to have 15 participants in Charleston, South Carolina. The second trip is expected to have 12 participants and will take place in San Diego, California. The third trip is expected to have 6 participants and will take place in Tucson, Arizona. The first half of each trip will be spent working with a local organization doing trail work while the second half will be spent either backpacking (Tucson and San Diego) or black water kayaking (Charleston).

The Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Student Association Conference is an annual leadership and community-building conference held in February.

Student Hospital Connections seeks the overall improvement in the field of healthcare services around the metro Atlanta area by encouraging and assisting with volunteering opportunities such as providing transportation for Georgia Tech students to Grady Hospital and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Since Georgia Tech can rental policies have been changed, Student Hospital Connections must now rent vans from an outside organization.

The Solar Jackets is a competition club established in the fall 2007. Our
objective is to inspire and educate people with our commitment to alternative energy and to explore
creative uses for electricity and solar power. We are a large but dynamic group of
students, faculty members and engineers with a diverse cultural and academic background.
This year, our project is to build an Electric Vehicle by converting a gasoline sports car. This is our first project and it will be a show car at many events on campus and in the Atlanta area. We also will work on smaller projects this year, as for ex. our UV-Water Filtration System. In the future we plan to build a Solar Car.

Description of the event

Description of Proposal (including how this program or event fosters leadership or Georgia
Tech community involvement):

The proposed bike rental program will be a cooperative effort between Students Organizing for Sustainability (SOS), Outdoor Recreation at Georgia Tech (ORGT), and Auxiliary Services (Housing and Parking & Transportation Departments). Housing is currently in possession of 70 used bikes that were abandoned on
campus last year. The combined value of these bikes has been estimated between $10,000-15,000. In an effort to use these assets to benefit the student body and Georgia Tech at large, we have developed a self-sustaining system that requires minimal labor, initial investment and maintenance. Volunteers from SOS will be in charge of setting the program up by painting and repairing ridable bikes in preparation for launching the program at the beginning of spring semester. We plan to use the remaining bikes and spare parts as incentive for volunteers to help with the initial program setup. For example, if someone volunteers for X number of hours (~10) they will be allowed to build their own bike from the frames and parts not used in the rental program. Once the bikes are ready to be rented, ORGT has agreed to provide storage space as well as check-out and check-in services using their current gear rental system and current student employees. This is ideal due to the fact that ORGT already has an established system in place to handle liability and property damage. Before being rented to students, each bike will undergo a safety inspection to avoid liability in the event of an accident. Parking & Transportation has also made a commitment to provide additional storage space in addition to what is available through ORGT. All bikes will be painted with a uniform theme and registered with GTPD for easy
identification. Once in operation, this program would allow any member of the Georgia Tech community to rent a bike, helmet, light and lock from ORGT for a period of weeks, months, or by the semester. Students will be held responsible for returning the bikes and other property in their original condition or face fines and a hold placed on their bursar account. Routine maintenance costs and periodic safety checks would be completely covered by rental fees, meaning that the project would not require additional funding after an initial investment. Campus organizations such as GTRI have already expressed interest in renting some of the bikes and possibly conducting research with them to further increase bike accessibility and use on campus. This program fosters leadership by engaging students in fund-raising, writing proposals, self-organizing and community building.
Community involvement is further promoted by encouraging participants to decrease their impact on the environment through use of sustainable forms of transportation. Students will also become more physically active through the program, thereby improving their health.

Date of Event/Program:
Beginning in spring 2009 semester and continuing indefinitely.

Benefits (who will benefit from this program or event):
The most notable beneficiaries of this program will be students and other members of the Georgia Tech Community. Program participants will become more physically fit, save money on gasoline, decrease travel time around campus
(when compared to walking and driving when traffic is bad) and improve their overall quality of life. More specifically, the
GT Mountain Bike Club (a sub-group of ORGT) will benefit from having access to a larger number of bikes. They will be able to use unrented bikes on their trips and also enroll in a program that allows them to purchase wholesale parts for
lower costs than they are currently paying. International and exchange students who are only on campus for a semester or two will especially benefit from access to bikes without having to purchase their own, which they could not typically take home with them. Students will enjoy easier access to businesses, jobs and other organizations near to campus and the community surrounding Georgia Tech will benefit from increased business from students. This will improve the overall economic development of the area and promote a greater sense of community. On a broader scale decreased output of smog, carbon dioxide and other pollutants and greenhouse gases will benefit the metro Atlanta community and the world.

The GT Racquetball Clubs is requesting funds for a stringer, string, and radar gun. This is to improve performance and efficiency of club operations.

Racquet Stringer:
-Klippermate Racquet Stringer: $135 (Capital Outlay funded at $90)
(It costs $20 to string a racquet and a competitive player gets it done
every 3 months or so. We could save a lot of money by going ahead and
getting a stringer. It also minimizes downtime.)

Racquet String:
-Ashaway Superkill II reel: $40
-Ashaway Superkill 17 reel: $40
-Ashaway Liberty 16 reel: $26
(This is enough string for 20 restringings on good racquets and 20 on decent
racquets. The idea is that the lower quality ones could be used as practice
to learn how to string well and could also be offered at a discounted rate
to non-club students who play racquetball, tennis, or squash.)

Radar Gun:
-SpeedTrac X Radar Gun: $135 (Capital Outlay funded at $90)
(A radar gun would be a valuable tool in tracking the progress of
swing-mechanics training as well as strength training. We could also use it
as an attraction for fundraising events by holding a competition to see what
non-club member could hit the ball the hardest.)

The Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society aim to afford opportunities for chemistry students to become better acquainted. Bowling with Professors is an annual event that brings not only chemistry students, but also professors in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry together, allowing them to get to know each other outside of the classroom.

Georgia Tech has been participating in Campus Movie Fest, the world’s largest student film festival, since 2003. We have won honors in the Atlanta region finale as well as national recognition for best picture (2007) and best drama (2008). Filming and editing equipment are provided free of charge to approximately 100 student teams competing in the week-long event. The campus finale in the Ferst Theater attracts roughly 750-1000 guests from the Georgia Tech community. Ideas United, the company that runs CMF nationally, is donating $26,567 of the cost, leaving Tech’s iMovieFest to finance the remaining $10,00 admission fee into the competition. Because our organization is not chartered, we will also have to pay the rental fee for the Ferst Center, an additional $2634.