Hola Plummers! Hope all of you had a good term. Twelve of your peers from both A-Soc and B-Soc made an appearance at the Professional Engineers Ontario – Student Conference (PEO-SC) on the weekend of November 12th at the University of Toronto. It was a conference of awareness, education and much mayhem!
The conference started with a remarkable speech from the famous, motivational speaker, Drew Dudley. He made us laugh and cry, question and reflect, smile and ponder by drawing on his experiences from personal interactions with people. Another highly motivational speech from Ron Shimnoy focused on having confidence and positive attitude towards one’s self, and development of interpersonal skills in addition to technical education.
Representatives from the PEO were present throughout the conference to ensure everything was running smoothly. There were presentations on the importance of obtaining Professional Engineering License, introduction to the Engineering Intern Training (EIT) Program, the EIT Financial Credit Program (FCP), and chapters run under the PEO and the Student Membership Program (SMP). If you are getting anything out of this article, remember this: if you register for the EIT program within six months of your graduation date, your registration fee and fee for the first year are waived.
Emphasis was placed on the participation of engineers in public policy, as public interest is one of the stipulations of the Professional Engineering License. There are currently two engineers in the legislature and the goal is to increase this number to magnify the change that engineers can bring about in the everyday lives of people. A couple of presentations also focused on the technical roles of engineers being intertwined with socio-economic and cultural factors as well as the importance of this awareness among engineers in order to propose the best solutions.
In addition to informational presentations on graduate studies and entrepreneurship, my favourite was a presentation by Vernon Kee; he initially went to school for Biology, dropped out and did competitive paintballing for a year, realized he liked engineering, got a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering, went to MIT for grad school (Smart people impress me, OK), worked in the automotive industry for a few years and dropped it all to become a high school teacher so he could make a direct impact! How cool is that? That’s doing something that makes you happy and contented, risk-taking, believing in one’s abilities, the importance of technical education – all in one for me.
Now you are probably thinking, “I am fine with reading this article but who wants to sit all through that for an entire weekend.” Well we had our fair share of fun too! The first night was an open bar night with lots of music, dancing and mingling where UW beat Mac at boat-racing with two girls on our team! Saturday night was a rather elegant affair with a masquerade on a cruise. Needless to say, more boat-racing ensued 😉
Keep your eyes out for announcements by the VP-External calling for delegates if you wish to attend a conference. They are a great way to meet people and network, listen to inspirational stories and mingle with fellow students from across Ontario!
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