The Summer Fellowship is a 16-week program for highly engaged engineering students who want to grow the impact of their student organization and themselves as leaders. This year ILead worked with 9 student leaders who engaged with developing and testing strategies for organizational development, learning from each other, interacting with ILead staff, professors, and senior leaders from the industry, and receiving 1-on-1 coaching and personal feedback.
Meet the Summer Fellows cohort for 2018 and read about the organizational change they are driving!
Nirali Patel (Chem) | VP Business Relations, Sustainable Engineers Association (SEA)
Although founded by engineering students, SEA plans to expand its student members base across all UofT faculties with the hope of creating an inter-campus platform to engage sustainability innovators from all academic backgrounds. Through my position and this fellowship, I plan to introduce new practices within SEA to help cater to the interests of all students interested in sustainability with the eventual outcome of increasing club participation and participant diversity.
Morris Huang (MSE) | Vice President Learning, Engineers Without Borders
Although Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is a multidisciplinary organization, it lacks the memberships and participation of students outside the Faculty of Engineering. The aim of my change project is to diversify EWB’s community through partnerships with student clubs from the Faculty of Arts and Science to bring about novel initiative and opportunities for its students.
Julia Filiplic (MIE) | Vice Chair Leadership, University of Toronto Engineering Orientation
My goal with the ILead Summer Fellowship is to create a stronger community among the head leedurs of F!rosh Week 1T8. I believe that their groups and connections with leedurs and frosh will be stronger if they are able to share, collaborate, and be vulnerable around each other.
Stephen Joly (ChemE) | President, Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity – Tau Kappa Chapter
In my organization, the Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta – Tau Kappa chapter, we face many issues related to operational risks, however through my involvement in the ILead Summer Fellowship, I have come to realize these are only symptoms which are a result of a lack of frameworks, general oversight, and team alignment. My change project revolves around inciting a change in our organizational culture by creating a well defined target state and showing how we can achieve it simply in the way we execute on our mandate and with what attitude we do so.
Greg Gambino (Civ) | Co-Chair, ILead:Grad
Previous executives of ILead:Grad have successfully implemented programs for graduate students which have primarily focused on personal growth and professional leadership development—two of the three pillars ILead:Grad is founded upon. The third pillar is related to leadership development through community service and being effective leaders in our communities. Now that the organization is in a strong position to effectively deliver personal/professional leadership development opportunities, the goal of this change project is to re-establish the third pillar of leadership education through community initiatives.
Dylan Vogel (EngSci) | Chief Systems Designer, UTAT Space Systems
The goal of my change project is to create a culture within UTAT Space Systems which emphasizes design milestones. I hope to create a culture of accomplishment which is supported by good communication and technical documentation within the team. The hope is that regular milestones will give members more opportunities to learn, make mistakes and contribute to the design in a meaningful way.
Eric van Velzen (EngSci) | Thermal Systems Lead, UTAT Space Systems
My change project in the fellowship is directly related to improving the experiences of members of UTAT Space Systems. Through the rest of the summer and after, I plan to gather and understand experiences of members in UTAT Space and ensure those voices are heard. In the organizational changes that the team is working through, I am leveraging my position as Thermal lead to be closely involved in decisions about team structure, and ensuring the consideration of the members in such changes. It is a challenging time for the team and I am doing my best to help get the team to its most effective state, with members of the team empowered to bring forward their best.
Fizza Ahmad Shiekh (ECE) | Co-Chair, ILead:Grad
Hannah Bendig (MSE) | President, Sustainable Engineers Association (SEA)
My goal is to create a stronger community within the Sustainable Engineers Association (SEA). Each sub-team focuses on their individual initiative with very little cross team communication and participation. I want to bring everyone together and reinforce the mission of SEA in order to build the feeling of a community, improve our communication, and promote collaboration.