The UMBC ACM Student Chapter will kick off the Spring Hi-Tea series this week at 3:00pm on Friday, February 20. Hi Tea is a student-run social event held (nearly) every Friday from 3:00 to 3:30 in the third floor hallway of the ITE building outside the CSEE Department suite (325 ITE). All students, staff, faculty and friends of the CSEE Department are welcome to attend. Each week, a group of students will plan and assemble simple refreshments for the event. See our photo sets for pictures of past Hi-Tea events.

This week the event host is the IEEE Student Branch and next week it will be the Ebiquity Research Group.

This time we are changing the competition model to bring in more participants and give away more prizes. We are also modifying the judging process to bring in more votes from the faculty, staff and students who are attending the event. We will continue to have faculty and/or staff judges at the same time, that would help us find a right balance for the judging process. Although the competition rules remain the same, we are now going to have four winners and instead of a knockout tournament format we will have points based ranking format. Here are the rules:

• Form groups of one to three members. Teams do not have to have all members from the same lab. So feel free to form a group with any of your friends from the CSEE Department.
• Create a name for your team or use your lab’s name.
• The winning team will be chosen from a weighted combination of points given by judges and attendees.
• Each week one or more teams may participate. All of them would get points on the judging criteria from the judges and attendees.
• Points obtained through the semester would be ranked and the top four team would receive the prizes.
• Each team should limit their presentation to $25. Each team MUST save their receipts to obtain their reimbursement. We will inform you how to get the reimbursement.
• Teams will be judged on creativity, presentation, and budget planning. It is preferred that you list how you managed your expenses for the judges to verify limit-to-$25 rule.
• The Hi-Tea competition will proceed through the semester and at the end of the semester the winners would be announced.

For questions, comments, and registration, send email to one of the Hi-Tea committee members: Genaro Hernandez Jr. (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ), Primal Pappachan (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) or Sunil Gandhi (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ).