Essay On Engr 107 – Spring 2015assignment #4name:student ID:date Submitted:

Dr. Chris Thomas

Dr. Chris Thomas started with the discussion on the upcoming career fair that was supposed to happen the following Monday. This, he noted was an opportunity meet and engage major manufacturers. He noted that such as opportunity would be important in starting a relationship with the manufacturers and developing an avenue to get an internship or job in the future. Meeting the HR directors provides an opportunity for one to cement a place in terms of jobs. Dressing appropriately is essential, as complaints have been raised during other visits. It is important to come early, and it would be advisable to carry a resume. Other than having a degree, it is important to develop people skills. Most people get jobs through developing relationships and by word of mouth than through the formal application processes. Every experience in looking for a job is important. It helps one to develop and learn from past situations to use in future opportunities. Focus on acquiring a job that meets your needs than money.
Dr. Chris Thomas then asked the students to do a simple exercise where each person was required to think about the most important things in their lives and right them down. Examples included traveling, working in a certain firm and starting a family among others. From this, it became important to know that no single job can satisfy all human wants. It became necessary to think about that one need that is more important than the other needs.
In developing a resume, there is no standard design. It becomes important to ensure it is neat, organized and readable. It becomes vital to understand the needs of the employer prior to developing a resume. Subsequently, once the employer’s needs are understood, they need to be incorporated in the resume in such a way that they will be to the point and indicate how best one will meet the needs of the employer. The resume should not be long, as the employer may not have the time to go through it all. The resume needs to be about the needs of the employer.
Utilization of counseling sessions is important, as college life is hard. The counseling center is important for one to unload their burdens. It may be a one-time thing or a regular thing, and it depends on person’s ability to cope with issues of life in college. Dr. Thomas insisted on the importance of talking to professionals at the counseling center. He offered his email in case one needs any assistance.

Ms. Janet Woolman 

Ms. Woolman discussed the innovation center at the University. The program offers a minor in innovation engineering. There six minor courses and four foundation courses. Innovation engineering is important to make a person different in the eyes of the employer. The program’s concept is to teach students to be able to create, communicate and commercialize innovative ideas. The program is important to open opportunities. Innovation is important to maintain business life cycles. Things become outdated quickly. Thus, innovation in engineering is significant. An example of innovation is in detergents where there have been 63 innovations in 63 years. Innovation engineering teaches students to think differently in an attempt to solve everyday problems. An exercise involved coming up with 100 hundred ideas on a new types of children’s playground. Coming up with ideas involves using related and unrelated stimulus. An additional exercise involved generating ideas on candy. Students came up with different ideas, which displayed that the brain can be stimulated to generate novel ideas. She noted that there are diverse ways of generating ideas. People can come up with different ideas where one idea leads another person to come up with another idea. She also noted that innovation engineering is hard for students who do not attend classes and do not do homework. Students have access to innovation labs where they can access a number of tools and technologies to help them study.
She noted that the innovation center has worked with a number of organizations to solve real problems. The course does not have finals. Students are required to read lectures before coming to class. In class, they discuss and then submit homework online. The goal of the program is mastering the 12 skills. Students have the opportunity to ask if they do not understand the different skills and can resubmit until they have mastered the different concepts.

Ms. Jessica Hutchings

Ms. Hutchings showed students how to use library resources for engineering purposes. In the case any resource is not available, students can send a request and the library can loan it on behalf of the student from another library. Students can access the library account while off campus. For this, one needs to request a pin that will be used to assist in accessing the library. For loaning books, it becomes important to set an inter-loan library account. To find books, one needs to search the library catalog on the specific engineering fields such as mechanical or civil engineering. Journal articles are located on the articles tab. The tab contains links to different databases. The filter options help to narrow down the search. Filters include dates and author options. She provided examples of engineering databases that are commonly used by engineers.
A database such as Ebscohost provides options for different citation styles. Additionally, there is availability of mp3 files that can be downloaded on the different journal articles. Request for inter-loan books may take a few days to be completed. That is when one receives an email that they have received their inter-loan books or articles via email. Most of the engineering students rely on engineering textbooks rather than articles. The library website can be essential in accessing scholarly journals. The engineering journals are mainly written for other engineers. What makes them scholarly is that fact that they undergo a peer review process. Peer review process involves an evaluation of the articles by professional in the same field as the author to ensure that what is published is accurate. The peer review board may make recommendations to publish or makes changes then publish. In case one finds it difficult using library resources one can contact the library staff for assistance via email or chat. It is important to ask for assistance, as the university library is different from other forms library.