On the 24th of March 2006, AECES (formerly Association of Electronics and Communications Engineering Students) was officially accredited as one of Ateneo’s School Organizations.

Ms. Claire Tiamzon, AECES President (2005-2006) received a letter last March from the Office of Student Activities (OSA) of the Ateneo de Manila University regarding the accreditation status of the said organization. According to the letter, the organization received a grade of 2.25 with the equivalent letter grade of C.  This entitles the organization a year of accreditation beginning April 1, 2006.

As an incentive, AECES is entitled to use the word “Ateneo” for the org name. With this, AECES is now named as the Ateneo Electronics Engineering Society. Another privilege is the org room (shared with CompSat) located on the third floor of MVP Center for Student Leadership. Moreover, the organization will be a member of the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo (COA), and will be placed under the Ateneo Science Guild (ASG).

The accreditation is a three-year observation process, and Buddy Arancon, AECES president circa 2002, was its pioneer. The previous year was the final year of the three-year process; wherein the Executive Board (EB) was required to submit a Year End Self-Survey Report (YES Report) to OSA. This contains different evaluation forms and reports related to the projects, officers and members.

The YES Report was then presented and defended by Ms. Claire Tiamzon (outgoing AECES president) and Mr. Luigi Onglao (current AECES President) to a panel of judges that included OSA, Sanggu, COA, and faculty representatives.  The presentation and defense was also a medium to present the uniqueness of the organization.

Held in Cervini Rec Room, AECES members together with some ECE professors excitedly attended the awarding of AECES Awards and the induction of officers last February 22, 2006.

Although the program started late due to some technical problems, the Awards night of AECES Awards pushed through, with a variety of surprises prepared by the Executive Board and Project Head Ms. Cathy Favorito. The induction of AECES officers for the year 2006-2007 was also held during the Awards night.

The AECES Awards, a project headed by Mr. Jerome Limkin, was conducted a couple of weeks before the Awards night, where members (and non-members) get to nominate AECES members for different categories such as: Lord of Charings, Mr./Ms. Congeniality, Indyanero Jones, King Corn, The Late Samurai, Pare Hotter, Aeces Sweethearts, Captain Barber, DOTArminator, and Hot Chick.  

On the latter part of the event, the EB prepared special awards for three exceptional AECES members. The awards were given to Mr. Limkin as the “Most Promising Member,” AECES Awards Core Group for conducting the “Best Project of the Year” which is “AECES Awards 2006”, and finally to Mr. Francis Frederick H. Cruz as the “Member of the Year.”

After roughly six years in existence, the Ateneo Electronics Engineering Society (AECES) is finally accredited. As the home organization of Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) majors, its primary aim is to provide a venue for ECE students to exercise their leadership skills and facilitate fruitful interaction between the students themselves, their faculty, and the whole Ateneo community. However, AECES does not close its doors to non-ECE majors. With technology being part and parcel of one's daily life nowadays, AECES also offers a prospective non-ECE member a distinctive feel of being immersed in the current trends in engineering and technology.

Aside from a functional and effective leadership, the key towards accreditation for a prospective Ateneo organization is a competitive lineup of activities for the school year. This should be anchored on a good number of quality projects, geared towards the development of the organization and its members, and more importantly, aims to have an impact on the Ateneo community. To facilitate in the planning, monitoring, and execution of the various AECES projects, the projects are grouped into six departments. The heads of each department manage and oversee the projects on their fold. The project heads then take care of the specifics and have first-hand access on the details of the project plan and its eventual execution.

But all these projects will go down the drain if there were not enough volunteers to help in facilitating it. Indeed, the life of the organization resides on its members. Even if the most dynamic and skilled leaders serve in this organization, their efforts will be wasted if the members decide to be apathetic towards the organization's activities. There are no excuses for being outside the AECES' sphere of influence. Members have a variety of projects to choose from, ranging from academics (tutorials, book referrals), to finance and marketing (food sale, sports festival), and to external affairs (campus exchange, company tours), among others.

The one-year accreditation of AECES should not be seen only as a reward for a successful performance in the past school year. Rather, it should be considered as a challenge---for being accredited means that the standards have been raised and that there is plenty of room for improvement towards excellence. Hopefully, when all the major players in this organization put up above-par performances during the entire school year and the years to follow, AECES will soon be a "household name" not only in the Ateneo Science Guild (ASG) but also in the list of Ateneo's thriving and successful organizations.