SEC president focuses on uniting and developing future engineers

Reed Hampton’s leadership philosophy is simple: Question everything. As president of the Student Engineers’ Council (SEC) at Texas A&M University, he’s focusing on iterative improvement for the organization. “Everything should have a concrete reason for its existence beyond maintaining the status quo,” said Hampton, a computer science major from Keller, Texas.

Another principle initiative for Hampton, who has been president for 10 months, is building unity across the college. “The Zachry Building has been an excellent source of unity,” he said. “It has brought engineering students and societies together from across campus.”

In high school Hampton’s best subjects were English and history. “My mom couldn’t understand why I was choosing the subject I was the worst at,” he said. “And I said, ‘because that’s what I want to get best at.’ If I’m already good at something I don’t need to keep doing it. That mentality drove me in the direction of engineering. I fell in love with the problem-solving aspects, the benefit it can have on society and the opportunity for impact even a single person can have, whether that’s creating a software program for a new medical device or even just making people’s lives more convenient. I decided to study here because I recognized that Texas A&M had the leading engineering program in the state of Texas.”

Hampton’s first semester was rough. Despite performing well in high school, he learned very quickly he would need a different approach to education at Texas A&M. “It affected me in a profound way,” he said. “Having a humbling experience was a significant course correction.”

He sat down and wrote a very long life plan of all the things he wanted to do and the dates he wanted to do them by with the goal of holding himself accountable. From there he was able to turn his academics around.

“I realized I needed to surround myself with people that were smarter than me, who were better than me at public speaking, who were more eloquent than me in interviews, and to try and learn from them,” said Hampton. “That’s what led me to the SEC. The SEC has a culture of developing its members and providing opportunities for them to grow and become leaders, both in academics, research, industry and among their peers. I recognized that it was a group of very qualified people, some of the most intelligent people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and being able to call my friends.”

The SEC is most well known for their SEC Career Fair — the largest student-run career fair in the nation. The fair typically hosts nearly 400 companies with 10,700 student visitors. The SEC also helps facilitate professional advancement through Industry Night Seminars and Department Informational Saturdays.

The SEC provides opportunities for students to be heard by the administration, and acts as a liaison for the students. The Engineering Student Survey is a unique opportunity for students to express their concerns. What many people may not know is that SEC members go through every single free response. “We present it to staff, faculty and the dean,” Hampton said. “It leads to concrete changes.” This year’s survey was also professionally vetted by the Public Policy Research Institute and each question was reviewed to remove implicit biases.

In the Aggie Spirit of selfless service, the SEC works with 15 other societies to host the annual Spark conference, an engineering design competition on the Texas A&M campus with a focus on inspiring kindergarten through 12th grade students to explore the engineering field while showcasing Texas A&M's culture and traditions.

Read more about Hampton and the SEC on Ingenium, the official blog for Texas A&M Engineering.