The OPTIONS Program

OPTIONS = Opportunities for PhDs: Transitions, Industry Options, Networking, and Skills

The OPTIONS Program is an initiative by the Vice-Dean, Graduate Studies and the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) to support PhD students and post-doctoral fellows who wish to explore career options.

Learn more here: uoft.me/optionsprogram

Are you unsure about the career options that exist for PhDs? Join us at The Living Library: A different kind of networking experience! In this interactive library, you are the “reader” and PhD alumni working in a variety of industries (biotechnology, education, start-ups etc…) are the “books”.  In small groups, you will have a 15 minute conversation with a PhD alumni about their career, the path they’ve taken, and choices they’ve made to get to their current job. You will then move onto the next “book”, giving you the unique opportunity to hear multiple perspectives.

This event is brought to you by The OPTIONS Program and ILead:Grad, a graduate student-run leadership development group.

Register!

Good feedback is necessary for growth…so why are we often so afraid of giving and receiving it? Explore what makes feedback difficult, and pick up tools on how to leverage feedback for improving yourself and others. We’ll also cover real student experiences together so that you can put these skills into practice!

Overview:

On March 5th, we will have two events; a research seminar followed by an interactive workshop. Please see the descriptions below for further information and fill out the RSVP form to indicate if you would like to attend one or both of these events.

Seminar:

Listening as Leadership: Engineers in Community Development and the Extractive Industries

11:10 am – 12:00 pm, GB 202, March 5
Jessica Smith and Juan Lucena, Colorado School of Mines

Learning how to listen to other perspectives – especially from people who are not engineers or who are critical of the organizations for whom they work – is a key but often overlooked aspect of engineering leadership. We begin by profiling engineers who had to learn to listen in order to engage in community development work, and then show that listening also plays a key role in what many would consider to be an unexpected place: the mining and oil industries. For engineers working on controversial projects, listening to critical perspectives has become a key activity as they seek to design processes and infrastructure that address the concerns of their companies as well as their stakeholders. Finally, we share how we are preparing students to listen inside of the Humanitarian Engineering program at the Colorado School of Mines. We argue that contextual listening is a prerequisite for using engineering to promote social justice and social responsibility, and outline course activities to develop engineering students’ appreciation for and ability to engage in contextual listening.

Workshop:

Redefining Engineering Leadership: Teaching Social Justice and Social Responsibility

12:30pm – 1:30 pm, GB 202, March 5
Juan Lucena and Jessica Smith, Colorado School of Mines

Engineers are designed to serve, and service is an essential feature of engineering leadership. Social justice and social responsibility call our attention to those parts of society that have historically not been served by engineering. The goal of this workshop is to collaboratively develop strategies to advance the work that engineering educators do by showing how social justice and social responsibility are inherent to engineering leadership. Engineering educators will come out of this interactive workshop with a) strategies and applications for teaching (socio)technical content via interactive learning b) interventions that promote more robust problem defining and solving processes, c) clarity on how to promote sociotechnical thinking and learning in the next generation of engineers, and d) approaches to engage relevant social justice and/or social responsibility frameworks that place engineering learning in a broader context to motivate why students learn what they learn.

Please RSVP here:

Engineers are designed to serve, and service is an essential feature of engineering leadership. Social justice and social responsibility call our attention to those parts of society that have historically not been served by engineering. The goal of this workshop is to collaboratively develop strategies to advance the work that engineering educators do by showing how social justice and social responsibility are inherent to engineering leadership. Engineering educators will come out of this interactive workshop with a) strategies and applications for teaching (socio)technical content via interactive learning b) interventions that promote more robust problem defining and solving processes, c) clarity on how to promote sociotechnical thinking and learning in the next generation of engineers, and d) approaches to engage relevant social justice and/or social responsibility frameworks that place engineering learning in a broader context to motivate why students learn what they learn.

Speakers
Jessica Smith and Juan Lucena, Colorado School of Mines

Having courage helps us to reach for the things that we really want in life, but how do we build courage? Join us as we push our comfort zones and explore what it means to cultivate courage, how we identify opportunities to build it, and what it can do for our lives. Warning: be prepared for surprises!

We make sense of our world through stories, whether we’re meeting new people or telling our story in a job interview. Figure out how structure and emotion can build a compelling message and how your words can leave a lasting impact that will get you the job or build new relationships.

Want to eventually get a job, but not clear on what the possibilities are for engineering grads? Unsure of what types of roles would most interest or fit for you? Come to ‘Chart Your Future- Engineering Careers’ edition to explore these questions in an interactive workshop.

Are you wanting to build your confidence as a public speaker? Do presentations get your heart pounding? Join us for a fun and interactive session on how to dramatically improve your public speaking skills with the chance for a lot of practice.

Join us on May 7, 2019 for the Graduate Engineering Career Fair, your opportunity to meet employers who are recruiting current MASc, MHSc, PhD, MEng and MEngCEM students, and alumni to fill a wide range of roles, including:

• full-time opportunities
• part-time opportunities
• internships
• research internships
• summer positions

Learn more about the Graduate Engineering Career Fair here.