Critiques, WatPD and Directorships

Well it’s been a great term, I’ve had a lot of fun, and I’ve certainly learned a ton (through both EngSoc and Electrical Engineering). This will be my last exec report until Spring 2011, when A-Soc returns. I will be in Waterloo for my work term so feel free to say hi if you see me over the winter. I have lots to update you guys on this time around so fasten your seatbelts! I wanted to start out by giving the short updates; Course Critiques Reading Party is happening Thursday Dec. 2^nd in CPH 3607 at 4:30. I hope to see as many people as possible come out and help sort out any inappropriate comments, some of them can be quite amusing, which helps make it fun! EngSoc Exec had a feedback survey due Monday, the results will be announced at tonight’s (Wednesday’s) EngSoc Council Meeting. Check out the Student Relations Officer article by Meg Bauman and Robin Jardin, it should give you all the info you want to know. Nominate your TA for the SFF Teaching-Assistantship Excellence Award, you can find the form on the SFF website here: http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~sff/TeachingAwards/ or in the EngSoc Office.  I wanted to remind everyone that you can get up to 150 P*5 points for submitting exams with professor solutions to the exam bank. By doing this you can help future students just like students of the past have helped you by submitting exams. Just go to our website > Services > Exam Bank and you’ll find everything you need.

The faculty is continuing to look into 8-month work terms, and they are going to be seeking student input through a survey. The general idea right now would be to optionally combine the 5^th and 6^th work-terms, while rearranging the upper year academic schedule somehow. The rationale behind this is that by having longer work term students would be able to get more technical jobs that contain more depth than most 4-month work-terms tend to be (Imagine following a project from start to finish, wow!). The survey will mainly be focused on gauging interest, not on implementation. They do realize that interest will vary widely based on what the implementation ends up being, so the questions will be tailored in a way to gauge interest with variances in implementation. Again, for the context of the survey please assume that some kind of suitable implementation is possible, and just indicate what your interest would be.

It’s been an eventful week in the WatPD Engineering world, at our meeting this week we chose the successful candidate to develop WatPD Eng 21, the second core course in the new program. The committee listened to several proposal presentations on Nov. 9^th, and made the final decision on Nov. 23^rd. I would like to congratulate Katherine Acheson and Peter Teertstra, they submitted a very impressive proposal. The committee is very excited about this opportunity, and look forward to working with them. Katherine brings some impressive experience to table, being to the developer of the popular WatPD 6 (Problem Solving). Peter brings the engineering connection to the team, he is a long-time professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department with a background in energy transfer, and an outstanding teaching record. He is also the Director of the new Student Design Centre in E5. The committee felt that their proposal and team had several key strengths which included: team balance (WatPD and Eng), experience teaching engineering courses, a large variety of tools introduced in the course content, and they are already strong instructors in their respective areas. Additionally, we were informed that more than 86% of people have enrolled for their Winter PD elective (90% WatPD, 10% PDEng), and PD20 has started the Q&A phase. Dr. Stubley and Dr. Pretti invited several local high school students to review one of the modules. The most notable result is that each of them said they had learned something worthwhile by the end of the 3 hour session.

The Dean’s Office has approached EngSoc to gather feedback on the possibility of creating a new Alumni Mentorship Network to connect alumni with undergrad students. They have over 100 alumni interested in helping out in whatever way possible, and they want to know if students would be interested. Please email me, tell me in person, or attend the discussion at next week’s EngSoc meeting to give me feedback.

Directorship applications for Spring 2011 are opening this week so I wanted to take a second to ask you to consider helping to represent engineering students, by applying to be a PD Rep, SFF Rep, or a Coop Rep. Help to provide the high quality academic services that EngSoc is known for, by applying to be a Resume Critiques, or Course Critiques Director. Help make the role of academic rep more effective, apply to be an Academic Rep Advisor! Are you interested in running for VP Ed, interested in helping out in an initiative, or interested in starting your own academic initiative? Please apply to be an Education Assistant.  Anyone can apply for these directorships, and you don’t need any experience to do so. If you have any questions about any of these directorships, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I wanted to finish off by thanking all of the people that have supported me this term, and done an amazing job being an EngSoc director. Thank you Anish, Anupriya, Misakura, Yousif, Adriana, Alexa, Conan, Prashanth, Promit, Rebecca, Angela, Alroy, Griff, Kyle, Rohit, Nupur, and Anjali. I want to thank my amazing teammates, the EngSoc Executive. Thank you Tim, Leah, Sean, and Marc, without you guys EngSoc would be lost. Last but not least, I would like thank Mary Bland, I don’t know how you put up with us, but thank you. EngSoc is a million times more functional due to your guidance and hard work. I’ll see you guys in the spring term, and as always please email me and let me know what’s on your mind, or ask me any questions you have (asoc_vpedu@engmail.uwaterloo.ca). See you next term!