Hey all,
I’ll be giving an update on how conferences have been coming along, since fall involves a lot of running around to schools across the country.
I spent the weekend of November 13-15 at the Professional Engineers of Ontario Student Conference at the University of Ottawa. This is a conference intended to “bridge the gap between graduating with an engineering degree to becoming a licensed professional engineer in Ontario”. The theme of the conference this year was sustainability in engineering, as it’s something that Ottawa U takes very seriously. The sessions varied from different aspects of sustainability to professional skills such as job hunting. Our delegates found each session really beneficial; if you’re interested in hearing about the conference and some of the things we learned please shoot me an email! I’d love to talk about the conference. The same weekend, Waterloo hosted the Conference on Diversity in Engineering. This was a national conference run by the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) with a rather self-descriptive purpose. I was obviously unable to attend, but the delegates enjoyed the networking opportunities and got a lot out of the sessions. If you’d like to hear about CDE, feel free to email our wonderful EngSoc president. Coming up in February we’ll be attending the Engineering Student Societies’ Council of Ontario’s (ESSCO’s) First Year Integration Conference at Ryerson University. FYIC is a great conference that helps first years learn how to get involved and be a strong leader within their Engineering Society and school. Finally, we’ll be heading to Calgary for CFES Congress in January. It’ll be a week long conference where we attend sessions all day, meet great people, and try to make a difference in engineering on a national level.
I want to highlight that advocacy is an important part of ESSCO and CFES. Both fight to make sure that the concerns of students about engineering in the province and country are heard. For example, Allyson Francis, our past EngSoc president, is currently the academic commissioner for CFES. This includes attending meetings for the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board and voicing student opinions. This means that if you feel passionately about an issue in engineering that goes beyond Waterloo, I would love for you to bring it to me so that I can talk about it at ESSCO or CFES, depending on what level it goes up to. You can also ask me about getting involved with ESSCO and CFES if you’d like to make a difference in engineering in Canada.
Thanks for reading! You can get me at vpexternal.b@engsoc.uwaterloo.
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