The other day, I was working in the Orifice and overheard a conversation between two fourth-year students. They were talking about the Student Deals stickers and how useful it was. However, they also mentioned that it was a shame that the Engineering Society didn’t advertise it better. Seeing as how the Student Deals sticker falls under my responsibility, I started asking myself questions.
Do people think that Engineering Society services aren’t useful? Or do people not use them because they don’t know about them? How do we fix that? Step one would probably be… well, talk about them!
The two Engineering Society programs that are arguably the most beneficial to the average student are the Student Deals sticker and the Engineering Capital Improvement Fund (ECIF). Tragically, I think these are two of the most under-used services we offer! I think this especially about ECIF, since we didn’t receive enough proposals last term to use up all of the money we allocated towards new projects.
RidgidWare is also a service that the Society offers that isn’t really seeing its time in the limelight. I’ve spoken at length about RidgidWare in previous issues, but the gist is that the store is still young and adjusting to what students want/need it to be. The RidgidWare team and I are working on maturing it by bringing in new stock and expanding hours, but we are still trying to see what advertising strategies work best. After all, what’s the point in bringing more things in if they aren’t going to the people who really want them?
In a similar way, Novelties needs a bit of a publicity boost. However, inventory is less of an issue. In fact, we just shipped in two brand new patches, and we’ve got some more planned! On top of that, we’re going to be restocking on glassware and bringing in a completely new item: baseball tees!
Lastly, we have the Sponsorship program, which is now accepting proposals until July 2nd! Although this program hits a smaller subset of students, I do feel that we are providing something that matters to the student groups that we do sponsor. At the last Engineering Society meeting, I was very happy to speak to the leader of a group that we sponsored last term. They had some kind words about how far their sponsorship money had gone towards enabling learning for the team.
So, those are our services. What can you do to take advantage of them and make Waterloo Engineering better?
- Go to the Orifice and get your Student Deals sticker! We have 8 partners and more on the way, so get your sticker!
- Go to the Engineering Society website and make an ECIF proposal. Whether you want more comfortable chairs in the student labs or smart water fountains in CPH, you could end up improving the lives of your fellow students!
- Like the Novelties and RidgidWare Facebook pages in order to get up-to-date information!
As always, if you want to shout out to me, you can reach me at vpfinance.b@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca. Thanks again for reading! Until next time!
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