Hi friends! My name is Steven Jia. I’m in 3A Systems Design Engineering and I’m serving as your current VP Communications! If you know the last time a SYDE student was an EngSoc executive, please let me know—I’m actually very curious to hear what the answer is.
So what exactly do I do? My role came about after the recommendations of the Executive Review Committee’s report were adopted at the 2015 Joint Annual General Meeting (JAGM). The VP Communications takes on much of the former VP External’s responsibilities and the former Communication Commissioner’s responsibilities. In essence, I am in charge of overseeing the Society’s internal communication channels (mailing list, social media, marketing, website, etc.) as well as representing the Society to external groups.
Over the Winter 2017 co-op term, I did a lot of administrative work on the internal side to get things ready for this term. Working with my counterpart on the B-Society and both Presidents, I revamped our communication guidelines to make them more modern and relevant (http://bit.ly/miscdocuments). I’ve also updated our mailing list categories based on the main types of emails that EngSoc regularly sends out. Many students have told me that they often get too many irrelevant emails, so make sure to update your subscription preferences (http://bit.ly/mailengsoc) so we can start using the new categories! One exciting initiative that our social media director Céline is currently running is a design contest for an engineering Snapchat geofilter. If you have some design chops (or even if you don’t but have a cool idea), please make sure to submit a design and be entered to win a $25 gift card and other prizes! Finally, something that the executive will be trying this term is weekly exec video vlogs. Check them out to stay up to date and watch our first one here: http://bit.ly/execvlog1!
On the external side, lots has happened since I’ve started back in January. To provide some context, the Waterloo Engineering Society is part of 2 larger engineering student organizations: the Engineering Student Societies’ Council of Ontario (ESSCO) and the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES). ESSCO is like the provincial-level EngSoc while CFES is the national-level one. Both hold several conferences throughout the year where member schools meet to discuss goals and initiatives, advocate on current issues affect students, and share best practices with each other. In addition to attending these conferences to represent EngSoc, I also select delegates to bring with me. To make this process more transparent, I trialed a Delegate Selection Committee last term that consisted of two at-large members who met with me to assess delegate applications and conduct interviews. Since the trial was very successful, I will be entrenching this practice into our Policy Manual at JAGM. Regarding the conferences themselves, both CFES Congress and the First Year Integration Conference went very well. The conference reports for both are available on the website, so please take a look if you are interested! Lastly, we have a new conference website that summarizes all of this information in one convenient place. Check it out at www.uwengconferences.ca and make sure to watch the spiffy conference video I made!
If you ever want to chat, my office hours are Tuesdays 11:30am-12:30pm and 3:00-4:00pm, and Thursdays 11:30am-12:30pm. You can also email me at vpcomm.a@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca. That’s all for now—thanks for tuning in!
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