Welcome back engineering students! I hope you all had a great break for the holidays and are enjoying the term so far! For those of you that I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, my name is Adelle, and I am the new Engineering Society President of A-Society. I am very excited to be back on term and begin implementing the initiatives that I and the amazing Society leadership team have planned.
New Initiatives and Co-op
One of the largest initiatives I have been working on over the co-op term is implementing a system for remote attendance and voting for our Annual Joint General Meeting held every Spring term. At this meeting, every fee paying EngSoc member—on and off term—has a vote, and therefore a say, in the direction of the Society. With the elimination of termly General Meetings (at which all on-term members had a vote) at the 2015 Joint Meeting, there was concern that off-term members during the Spring term will not have the same opportunity to voice their opinions. To remedy this, I am working on implementing a system to allow off-term EngSoc members to attend and vote remotely.
Some more initiatives I am working on include expanding and improving our “bank”-type services. I have been working with the Associate Dean Undergraduate, Peter Douglas, to implement a syllabus bank for elective courses, including technical electives and CSEs. This will assist engineering students with the process of choosing their courses each term. Other changes include implementation of a scholarship bank and improving the exam bank.
Orientation Week
The majority of my Winter term so far has been spent on Orientation Week 2016 Planning. As I’m sure you’re aware, a fall reading break has been approved (on a 3-year trial basis,) to be implemented in the 2016/2017 academic year. It was decided that the extra days would be taken out of Orientation Week, shortening the week to 3 days. This change has provided an opportunity for the University to re-vision Orientation 2016 to best meet the needs of students. To do this, an Orientation Working Group was created to design an Orientation program that reflects the mission of the program, is based on best practices and research, ensures a positive leadership opportunity for upper-year students, and works from the best elements of previous years while using the opportunity to re-vision the experience. This working group is made up of students, faculty, staff, and other campus representatives. I am sitting on this working group as the student representative from the Engineering Faculty. The other members can be found at uwaterloo.ca/orientation/planning-process-2016/get-involved
Phase one and two (“discover” and “dream”) of this process are now complete; in these phases, key stakeholders shared their perspectives and envisioned possible futures for Orientation. We discussed the “best of the past” and the factors that contributed to them, and then discussed what aspects and factors are most important in the week. The next phases are all about design and delivering; the working group is meeting all day January 26 and 29 to start designing the new Orientation Week. If you would like more information, visit uwaterloo.ca/orientation/planning-process-2016
If you have any questions about anything I’ve said in this article or about the Society, want to find out more about what we do, or just want to chat, shoot me an email at president.a@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca or visit me in the Orifice (CPH 1327). My official office hours are Thursdays from 12-2, but I can usually be found there whenever I’m not in class or meetings! I would be more than happy to answer any questions. Looking forward to hearing from you!
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