By Brenna Mackay
The Carleton Student Engineering Society (CSES) executive team hasn’t let the past year of virtual learning stop them from providing meaningful resources to their members. From academic and professional issues to social activities, the team remains dedicated to their mission of giving back to the Carleton University’s engineering community.
“CSES listens to its members about what they need and the issues they are undergoing,” says CSES President Logan McFadden.
“We wanted to prioritize supporting our members, socially, financially and academically to the best of our ability.”
CSES President Logan McFadden
Initiatives they championed include the CSES Support Fund to help students struggling financially, creating a Discord server to foster conversations, and providing numerous online events to build community.
Planning virtual programs was a challenge at first, says Vice-President Social, Davis Moore. The team had to adjust their approach as they incorporated feedback and learned more about how to run successful online events.
“After the first few social events, our team was able to get a good feel for how they should be run,” says Moore.
“We feel that we have been able to develop new activities to engage our audience and spark the interest of our member base.”
The feedback from members confirms that their work has not gone unnoticed.
CSES Vice-President Social Davis Moore
“Many members have expressed how much they appreciate our efforts in adapting our traditional events to an online format and how we have done an excellent job at keeping the events engaging,” Moore says.
“We have also received constructive feedback from some members, something that has been very important to the development of our virtual events.”
He adds that this year has opened up their eyes to a world of possibilities for how CSES will run its social events in the future.
For example, CSES hopes to open their Charity Local Area Network (LAN) team to a larger audience by collaborating with clubs within Carleton and other engineering schools in Ontario.
“Since all of our events are online, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to improve our inter-university relations with other engineering students from across Ontario,” he says.
CSES also plays a crucial role in fostering mental health, belonging and well-being among members.
“A large majority of the Carleton engineering community is made up of students who are in very demanding and difficult programs where it is easy to become lost in a routine of only doing school work all day every day,” he says. “The C-Eng community has always been an escape for our school’s engineering students to have an excuse to put their school work aside.”
CSES Vice-President Academic Macie Orrell
Macie Orrell, vice-president Academic shared that CSES recently held their first-ever virtual National Engineering Month (NEM) program, which consisted of student design team showcases, lunch with a professor, a weeklong scavenger hunt, computer-aided design (CAD) competitions, sustainability in engineering presentations and a workshop on Inuit history in Canada. They also hosted an online conference as a part of NEM Ontario’s University Challenge event.
“By hosting events, or even having office hours where people can come take a few minutes to catch up with one –another, has allowed the strong bonds within our community to continue,” Moore says.
“Keeping students connected with each other has also been important for keeping their social lives intact.”
Monday, March 29, 2021 in Engineering, Student Experience
Share: Twitter, Facebook
