Welcome first years! We are your Vice-Presidents Education, and we are very excited to meet you! Eric Cousineau is your Engineering Society (EngSoc) ‘A’ VP Education and Alex Hogeveen Rutter is your VP Education for EngSoc ‘B’. For an explanation of the difference between society A and B, please see Eric’s Article, “EngSoc: Services, Representation, and Events”. Eric will be running the show this fall, and you’ll meet Alex when he takes over in the Winter term. We are both in 3rd year electrical, so we’ve been around for a while and are eager to show you the reigns. VP Education is an important role that is responsible for 3 major things: Representation on established academic committees (co-op, course changes, etc..), improvement and maintenance of academic services, and acting as the student voice on academic issues academic issues brought to their attention. The third item changes term to term, but this term it most likely comprise of getting WatPD-Engineering up and running and drafting a student submission to Vision 2015: more on those in later articles.
As you can see, this position gives us students a voice in the university! We sit on the WatPD-Engineering Curriculum Committee to ensure student input is used to develop and improve the new program, we sit on the Senate Undergraduate Council where all undergrad curriculum and policy changes go through before reaching senate, and we sit on the Coop Working Group which deals with all coop issues related to engineering. We sit on a few more committees so feel free to visit the executive section of our website to find out more (www.engsoc.ca).
Our academic services are raved about by students, especially the exam bank and résumé critiques, so that’s what we’ll talk about here. You can find our exam bank on our website, after you log in using your quest credentials (http://engsoc.uwaterloo.ca/services/exam-bank). On here you will find midterms and finals from previous terms- most of the time they have professor solutions. This is a very popular resource! Our other popular service is résumé critiques, at which you can have your résumés critiqued by an upper year student. These students have been trained by CECS to help you turn your résumé into exactly what employers are looking for! Watch for advertising of this event, it should happen around week two of the fall term, so make sure you begin ironing out your résumés if you want to get that job with AMD, Aecon, or RIM! Check out our website for a complete list of academic services!
During the first week and a bit of class, your EngSoc A Executives will visit your class (during the pre-scheduled 30 minute time slot) to elect class representatives. Each class requires 2 EngSoc Reps, 5 Academic Reps, and 1 WEEF Rep. These representatives will carry your class’ voice on each of these matters. Academic Reps are responsible for voicing the opinion of your class on academic issues at academic rep meetings (3 each term), bringing up any concerns of the class to the professor (talking too fast, not enough examples, etc…), and representing your class at department meetings. EngSoc Reps are responsible to attend EngSoc Meetings (First one on Sept. 22nd) and vote for your class, as well as voice your class opinion on issues that are discussed. WEEF Reps are responsible to attend the 3 WEEF Funding Council meetings every term and vote for your class to decide the allocation of WEEF funding for the term.
We encourage you to approach us or any other executives and ask your questions. Our job is to represent you, and we can’t do that if you don’t tell us how you feel! Feel free to contact either of us through email at (Eric – asoc_vpedu@engmail.uwaterloo.ca, Alex –bsoc_vpedu@engmail.uwaterloo.ca), or just speak to us in person! Lastly, we wanted to leave you with one piece of advice: Technical knowledge will only get you so far: soft skills like clear communication, social aptitude, and leadership are what employers look for to distinguish you from the crowd! So get out of the dorm room and experience what the university has to offer!
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