Welcome back everyone! The time has come for us to begin our final term as exec, and search for a new set of leaders to bring the Society forward for the rest of 2015! But before the term is over, I’ve revised my original work plan to ensure that I close out all my platform points before my time as president runs out.
As an exec team, we’re continuing our initiative of reaching out directly to our diverse student members through dedicated face time with the entire exec team once a week (TIME AND DATE HERE, to follow soon). I strongly encourage anyone with concerns, ideas, criticisms, or questions to come chat with us! Even if you don’t have anything specific to discuss, we will have questions and discussion topics prepared which are relevant to current student affairs, to help in connecting students to the decisions and discussions happening around them.
We are also continuing the push to make the Engineering Society more useful for the average student by increasing and improving meaningful services and events. Our workshop offerings have increased significantly since our last term, which is a great success indicator! We look forward to your feedback and opinions on what you like about the current offerings and what other areas we might explore in the future to help students gain useful skills outside of an academic setting. I also am looking into offering engineering-specific help sessions in collaboration with the Student Success Office’s Success Coaches, to bring useful personal development tips and study skills to engineering students in the comfort of our own lecture halls. Sessions are expected to start as midterms approach, so keep an eye out!
Another area of my portfolio that I am hoping to dedicate lots of time to this term is advocacy. Last term I initiated a conversation with the SSO and Office of the Registrar regarding the process of petitioning an academic decision in the Faculty of Engineering. I did this in the hopes of streamlining the process between departments, so that all students have access to available resources and information to best prepare their petition cases. This initiative is progressing nicely, with updates to follow as things are finalized! I also have been closely following the issue of a new scheduling software that may impact the way engineering departments schedule their cohort times and locations. I have been meeting with all relevant parties to try to better understand how this new software compares to the old system and what issues may present themselves with a cohort-based program like engineering. A survey is likely to be sent out in the near future to gather information on what students think of the current availability of CSEs and options within the engineering course calendar, and to see how this feedback compares to the preference of having lectures in departments’ home space and in tightly scheduled blocks of lectures, tutorials, and labs.
There is much more on the horizon, but that information will come in the next issue, as I’ve already run out of space! As always, I can be reached at president.b@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca anytime, and would love to hear from you. Also, if you’re interested in becoming more involved in the discussion and decisions surrounding engineering students, make sure you come out to the next Engineering Society Council meeting on January 28th at 5:30pm in the E5 LiveLink Room (3101). All are welcome, and I look forward to seeing you there!
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