Hey everyone! Happy New Year, and I hope the start of your term is going well. My name is Abdullah Barakat, and I’m here doing what I love to do, representing you as your Engineering Society President. This is my final term as President, so I want to make sure I leave the biggest impact that I can before I have to retire my precious white hard hat. With that said, I thought I’d use this issue of the Iron Warrior to discuss what my goals are for this term, as well as give you some updates on what I did over the co-op term.
First of all, I plan to create a transition document for our lovely business manager, Mary Bland, that will encompass everything that she does for the Society. The goal of this is to inform future presidents of how much Mary means to the Society and what she does in her role, as well as to be prepared for future succession planning. Furthermore, I plan on working with Mary and Michael to create a transition plan for when Engineering 7 opens in September 2018, especially given that we will have space for RidgidWare and a new C&D on the main floor and we need to be ready.
Speaking of space, one thing in which our campus is unfortunately lacking is student study space. Because of that, I have been working with the Undergrad Office to create a plan for recognizing the underutilized areas within the Engineering buildings on campus, with the hopes of identifying potential uses for those spaces to introduce more study space. Until then, however, I plan on converting POETS into a study space every Tuesday for the duration of this term, which will hopefully promote a sense of community within Engineering and remind students that the stress and struggles of academics are not things that they have to go through alone.
Mental health has been a topic of discussion for the longest time, and the wait times to see a counsellor have not been going down. To combat this, I plan on running a referendum this term to introduce a $5 fee that will go towards funding a new Engineering Counsellor. More information to come with regards to this initiative in the coming weeks.
Lastly, the EngSoc website has been needing a revamp for quite some time now, so the amazing website team has been working really hard on it. The hope is to have it completely done by the end of the term.
With regards to what I did over the co-op term, I revamped all of our governing documents in an attempt to modernize them and make them more professional than their previous incarnation, which has been presented to the EngSoc Council this past week. Furthermore, I have had the privilege of sitting on many committees discussing the new Faculty of Engineering Strategic Plan, which will hopefully mean a new, positive direction for our Faculty. A lot of planning has gone into this term’s EngSoc Executive Elections, so I have been working to support the CRO (Simon Grigg) and DRO (Sarah Madigan) in running the election, and they’ve been doing a fantastic job! I also had the opportunity to sit on a panel with other Engineering Society Presidents from across Ontario, where we discussed the engineering undergraduate experience at our respective schools to a group of high school students interested in pursuing a career in STEM.
I will end things off by letting you all know that the Dean of Engineering’s Office has sent out a survey to all engineering undergraduate students that will impact the Faculty’s new strategic plan. They are asking students to rank what they believe the Faculty should consider a priority moving forward with the implementation of their new strategic plan, so please make sure you fill it in! It should only take a couple minutes of your time, and the Faculty will be taking the results very seriously when considering future initiatives.
That is all I have for now, but if you have any questions for me, please don’t hesitate to ask. Till next time 😉
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