Hello everyone! As promised at Council Meeting 4, here are the Exec updates for this meeting. We will go back to presenting updates normally, at potluck.
President – Hannah Gautreau
Mental Health Open Letter
I have been collaborating with the other society presidents to draft an open letter about mental health resources on campus. I have gotten feedback from the other presidents on my initial letter, and I had a meeting with Tristan Potter, the VP Education of MathSoc, and we refined the letter and developed a survey to gauge student opinion about mental health resources on campus. Stay tuned for the survey, hopefully it will be coming out soon!
Transition
I have been spending lots of time transitioning Rachel into her new role as President! She’s just about ready to get started, and I can’t wait to see what her and her new team accomplish over their term!
Joint Annual General Meeting
Our second annual Joint Annual General Meeting was extremely successful! We had over 100 votes in the room, and there was tons of great discussion. The Council Review Committee’s recommendations did not pass, but there was tons of great discussion about the values and expectations of council, and ways that we can move forward with improving the structure that we currently have.
Governing Documents
I have been spending the last week cleaning up all of our governing documents, and making sure that they are all completely up to date before my term is done. The latest version should be updated on the website by the end of this term!
In general, I am wrapping up my term and working on transitioning Rachel, so that’s all I have for this week!
VP Education – Anson Chen
PD
After our last meeting, I sent the letter expressing EngSoc’s concerns with PD. I have seen from resulting meetings that WatPD is taking our complaints seriously, and they do have an interest in making PD better. The committee of department professors and WatPD representatives is 100% committed to running a survey. Right now, the plan is to draft the questions by August, have EngSoc review and/or adjust the questions, and send it out in the Fall. The survey will capture what students feel about PD, and why they feel that way – for example, a response the committee highly anticipates is, “we already have great soft skills and don’t need to learn more.” This in turn means PD is not delivering the message of lifelong learning correctly. I know that we can run a survey faster on our own, but with a bit of extra time we can ensure the data will be considered credible by the people who can use it in a meaningful way.
WaterlooWorks
Rate My Work Term, the co-op rating tool, is one of the features promised for WaterlooWorks. I’ve been working with CECA along with reps from the other societies to develop the questionnaire. The bare bones of the questionnaire is pretty decent so far, but let’s hope that it actually comes out in a timely fashion.
CECA has consistently promised that WaterlooWorks will launch in Winter 2017, and this continues to be true. However, according to Feds, we should only expect “basic functionality.” This means WaterlooWorks will be functional enough to replace Jobmine, but some of the promised extra features may take longer to be fully implemented.
Co-op
7 students were on co-op in Fort McMurray during the fires; they are all safe. CECA is assisting them with finding replacement employment, and compensated them $500 each.
A common question I get asked is why Waterloo is able to advertise a 99% employment rate when, for example, the typical employment for Spring is around 96%. I found out the answer is that the 99% corresponds with Fall work terms; coincidentally, Fall is the term with no first years on work term. CECA will consider figuring this out with UW marketing.
Student Concerns
Thanks to a highly-noticed Facebook post on the EngSoc group that you may or may not have spotted, a handful of important academic concerns were discussed amongst engineering students. I have brought all of them to the attention of somebody relevant. Some were answered while the following are currently being worked on:
- Rising international tuition
- Rising admission averages and effects on the interest diversity of incoming students
- Access to course overrides and course approvals on co-op
- Schedule-related challenges in fulfilling CSE requirements
- I also carefully summarized the various student opinions regarding the baccalaureate designation and it was acknowledged by the Vice President Academic of the university.
If you have others, definitely let me know and I’m happy to bring them to people who can address them!
Course Critiques
Course Critiques Screening will be during lunchtime on Tuesday July 19! We’ll have free pizza for everyone who helps and the directors and I will bug you more about that closer to the day.
Exam Bank
We will be giving away 3 $25 Cineplex gift cards before the end of term, so everyone should submit the midterm exams you just got back!
VP External – Kieran Broekhoven
I’ll keep this quick! Pride and Canada Day happened this past weekend – a great time was had by all. We collected some feedback so they will be even more awesome in the future, and hopefully there will be less rain on Canada Day next time. If you happen to read this beforehand, Water Day is happening! In order to raise money for water.org, we’re having a watermelon eating contest and a water fight tomorrow (Sunday) morning and it’ll be totally awesome – check out the Facebook event. We also have another trip to THEMUSEUM happening! It’s an opportunity to get kids interested in engineering by doing cool science experiments with them. That’s happening on the 24th so keep an eye out for the Facebook event. Another recurring event we have happening is a blood run! We’ll be making a group trip to the blood drive on the 25th. It’s in you to give! 🙂 lastly, since WEC happened, we now have a team that will be attending the World Mining Competition for us in October! That’s pretty much everything that’s been happening/will be happening so let me know if you have any questions.
VP Finance – Don Tu
Like a short strand of licorice, I’m going to keep this short and sweet. The Sponsorship Committee met last Saturday and listened to many, many amazing teams pitch their work. Allocations will be announced at the next EngSoc meeting. Additionally, the EngSoc Board of Directors will be meeting on July 18th in order to deliberate on this term’s ECIF proposals. If you submitted a project proposal, stay tuned! Moreover, Novelties is going to be selling new glassware very soon. Stop by the store sometime during next week and shop around before we close for the term!
VP Internal – Teresa Lumini
Not too much to say since the term is wrapping up here! EngPlay is happening this week on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm at the Theatre of the Arts in the Modern Languages building next to DP! Come see a querky group of first years fight their way through their first year, rescuing co-op princesses and battling midterms! Genuis Bowl and Coffee House are also next week so put together a team and test your trivia knowledge and come out to EngSoc potluck and then stay and watch your fellow engineers sing and play their hearts out! Finally EOT will be happening next Thursday, and yes, POETS WILL BE LICENSED with the theme of Beer and Pretzels, a nice contrast to BOT’s Wine and Cheese.