Greetings from the ITE Central Coast Section! Midway through the year, I’m please to say that we’ve had a great first half of 2011. The Section has hosted a number of lunch meetings, including a couple of joint meetings with both professional and student Chapters, where both familiar and new faces provided much food for thought. We also had a successful golf tournament in March, organized by Robert Sweeting, City of Thousand Oaks, that included plenty of fun and sunshine for all, while helping the ITE student chapter at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

The Cal Poly Student Chapter continues to grow stronger. The level of interest, initiative and organization is the highest it’s been in several years. Most promising is the number of lower classmen that have assumed leadership roles within the organization, ensuring that ITE will continue as a visible and significant campus organization for several years to come. The Chapter meets Thursday nights to hear presentations from industry representatives and Central Coast ITE members about their latest projects. The Chapter also sponsors employer tours, so that student members may interact with prospective employers. If you are interested in presenting a project to the Student Chapter, or you would like to host the students at your place of employment, contact Steve Orosz (steve@oegsite.com), Student Liason.

The final planning stages for the 2012 ITE District 6 meeting in Santa Barbara are just around the corner, with much work still to be done. Our Local Arrangements Committee has shown tremendous dedication in making this event attractive and successful, and I would like to thank Tom Mericle, City of Ventura, for his role as Local Arrangements Committee Chair, and Robert Sweeting, City of Thousand Oaks, for his continued dedication to the Central Coast Section as Vice-Chair. The committee can always use a helping hand so if you are interested in participating in this historic Section event, please contact Tom Mericle (tmericle@ci.ventura.ca.us) or Robert Sweeting (rsweeting@toaks.org).

We hope the remainder of the year will be full of well-attended meetings, with greater opportunities to interact and network with our fellow members and students. We have an exciting set of events and topics planned for professionals and students alike, including a Vendor Show and Exhibit this fall. As always, any suggestions for meeting topics are welcome and encouraged, as are volunteers to speak at Section Meetings and serve as future Board Members. We hope to see you around!

Last, I would like to thank the 2011 Executive Board:

Vice President: Anthony Gallo, County of Ventura;

Secretary: Steve Orosz, Orosz Engineering Group;

Treasurer: Robert Sweeting, City of Thousand Oaks; and

Past President Dennis Lammers, Penfield & Smith

for their dedication and service to ITE.

And a special thank you to Rick Gallegos – Webmaster, for his continued efforts in updating and maintaining our website.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the meetings!

Larry Tay

2011 Central Coast Section President

Monica M. Suter, PE, TE, PTOE has worked over 23 years in

transportation for both the public and private sectors and is a Civil

Engineering graduate from Michigan State University. She manages an

engineering team for the City of Santa Ana, Public Works Agency, Traffic

and Transportation Engineering and was honored to serve as your Western

District President in 2008-2009. She recently served again as the District’s

Past President (January-July 2011) due to a board vacancy. Monica was

recently elected as International Director for the Western District & will

begin serving in January 2012. She has published/presented several

topics including “Video Detection for In-roadway & Activated Flashing

Crosswalks” & “Getting to ‘Yes’ With the Public & Elected Officials,” &

“Traffic Signal Warrant and Prioritization Processes,” recently plus she cocreated

& instructed the “MUTCD Update” Course with UC Berkeley Tech

Transfer for several years and also served as Vice Chair of the ITE

International Public Agency Council. While serving as S. California

Section ITE President, the Section received both the District and

International “Section Activities Award.” Monica is also a voting member of

the Signals Technical Committee of the National Committee on Uniform

Traffic Control Devices & is an Associate ITE Delegate. This committee

recommends to FHWA updates to our standards and guidelines

nationwide. When not volunteering for the profession, Monica can often be

found snow or wakeboarding, swimming, taking yoga or hiphop class,

visiting with family/friends, or singing/writing a song or two.