ESS 504: A conversation with the associate dean for students

Laura Vogt:
Hello. My name is Laura Vogt. I’m the Associate Director of Marketing and Communications in the College of Engineering and your host of the (Not so) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And today I’m really excited. We have Evan Variano, the associate dean for students here. And Evan is pretty new to his job, he hasn’t been there for too long yet. So Evan, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your role in the College of Engineering?

Evan Variano:
I’m so happy to be here, Laura, thanks so much for having me and welcome to all our listeners. I’ve been really enjoying podcasts during the pandemic. And so if you found this podcast during the pandemic, welcome to my favorite new hobby. And if you’ve been a long time listener, then send me some notes on what you like about what I did here and what could be done better.

Laura Vogt:
Definitely. We’re always looking for feedback.

Evan Variano:
Thanks so much. And my job is associate dean for students. Associate Dean means I am a professor halftime and I’m working in the administration the other half of the time. And so I became an Associate Dean because when I was a professor, I kept asking questions about how certain things worked. I would say, “Does anyone know if I can flip this midterm so that it’s more remote and accessible to people in other places?” And a lot of the questions I asked, I guess they were good questions, because they said, “You know what, Evan, you should be the one finding out those answers.”

Laura Vogt:
And now you found yourself with a bigger role.

Evan Variano:
A bigger role. And in the past six months that I’ve been doing it, it is quickly growing to be the favorite job I’ve ever had. I’ve had a lot of different jobs in my life and this one feels so good because the way I think of it is I make fine tuning changes to the machinery that helps so many students go through their education, for such a low price and at such a high quality. We never like to feel like we’re in a machine, but honestly, at this price and with this many students, we have to have some systems to guide you. There’s exceptions, anyone who’s ever filled out a petition knows that there’s exceptions and you can tailor certain pieces of the policy to your special cases. But it’s nice to have a default too, it’s nice to stand quietly on the escalator and let it lift you up.

Laura Vogt:
I like that idea.

Evan Variano:
Yeah. So if the escalator jams or is squeaking, I’m there with a little bit of oil.

Laura Vogt:
And so in your role, have you had one moment where you were like, oh, this is exactly what I was meant to do.

Evan Variano:
Absolutely. I think I have that moment every couple of days, which is great. I haven’t felt that in 15, 20 years. When I first found fluid mechanics and hydrology, that’s when I said to myself for the first time in my life, here is where I belong. I just love learning about the flow of air and water and I’ve made a good career out of it and I love teaching it, but sometimes I felt like I wanted to make sure that my classes were happening as part of the larger system, part of an environment in which the classes fit together and the students have a vibrant social life and career options are well aligned with the classes. I wanted to make sure that we weren’t just having a little fluid mechanics party that was separate from the real world. And every time I get to make our education system in Berkeley Engineering provide more of what the students want and help set people up for success, I feel really good because sometimes it’s just a little change that’s needed.

Laura Vogt:
As the Associate Dean for students, students reach out to you directly, if they are having concerns or issues?

Evan Variano:
Great question. Students do reach out to me directly. In fact, students shouldn’t have to keep track of which Associate Dean and which Assistant Dean does what. So we have a single email box where you reach all the deans at once. We can double check this, but it’s deans@berkeley.edu is what I think it is. Or engineeringdean@berkeley.edu. And this email, it goes to someone who will read it and send it to the right Dean. So students who email messages to that address, they’ll reach me directly and I’ll respond personally from my own email, variano@berkeley.edu and we’ll have a conversation. Sometimes I’m the person that can fix their problem directly, a lot of times I can refer them to someone else who can, because there’s a lot of resources, not only on campus, but in Berkeley Engineering. So often they’re asking me something that is perfectly answered by the ESS advisor or by the ESS programming team or by one of the many partner organizations we have all over campus.

Evan Variano:
DSP is someone we work with really closely, that’s the disabled students program. And of course, there’s the ombuds person’s office. An ombudsperson, that’s an official title, it’s like being a PhD or an MD or a podiatrist or a veterinarian. An ombuds person is someone who helps you get through a complicated organization and they don’t have any sort of biases. They just hold your hand and get you to the right people, like a cruise director. And so they’re often a great help to students. And I often refer people to the ombudsperson’s office.

Laura Vogt:
And we talked a little bit, or you had just mentioned the ESS advisors. We met some of the advisors in our last podcast to talk about the different types of advisors that are throughout the College of Engineering. Have you ever been a faculty advisor or are you currently a faculty advisor?

Evan Variano:
Yes. I have been a faculty advisor to undergraduates in civil and environmental engineering for about 10 years, two different five-year blocks. And I just finished two years being the faculty advisor to a group of masters and professional students in civil and environmental engineering. So I’ve been faculty advisor at two different levels, as well as faculty advising some student organizations. And I want to point out that RSOs, Registered Student Organizations are a really special way that students can interact with the Dean’s office because we provide a lot of resources to the engineering student organizations. For example, you might know if you’re involved with an RSO that there’s very strict limits with ASUC funding about what you can do. It’s very hard to spend your ASUC funds on food. So if an RSO joins the engineering student council, thereby becoming an engineering student organization, ESL, you’re both, you’re an RSO and an ESL. Once you’ve got that level, there’s additional funding you can get from the Dean’s office that’s a lot more flexible and then you can have taco night with your group.

Laura Vogt:
I like that idea of how being part of an engineering student organization brings you more resources. We are able to provide more support.

Evan Variano:
Absolutely. I mean, the engineering student organizations do so much for the experience that students have at Berkeley. It would be foolish of us not to fund them and support them. We offer all sorts of leadership training in addition to funds. So if you find yourself suddenly the secretary of an organization or the president of an organization, and you need a point or two on how to do it best, the engineering student services programming side, which is led by Marvin Lopez, but you might also know it through faces like, Tiffany Reardon or, oh, there’s so many, I’m not going to try to list them all lest I forget. But engineering student services programming offers many different opportunities to train yourself in leadership skills. From the epic one week leadership training to one off, one hour events where you can pick up specific skills, like how to use LinkedIn better or Slack, is it right for your organization or wrong for your organization? These sorts of events can help you be a better leader.

Laura Vogt:
And we have those, this past year since we did everything online, all of the events that we did this last year are linked on our website at engineering.berkeley.edu/events. So if anyone wants to check out what we had offered this past year, you can.

Evan Variano:
Absolutely. I love the fact that Zoom gives us the chance to drop into events that already happened and watch them at 1.5 speed. Super helpful. And if you love an event and you watch it three times, then come to one of the in person ones in the future, because there’s so much that comes out of the discussion. If I could put everything that you need to know for success in a book, I would, but your route to success and your route to knowledge is personal. And having discussions in small groups is what’s going to get you there fastest.

Laura Vogt:
And since this is for our new students that are incoming, do you have any tips for them about what it’s going to be like coming to campus for the first time?

Evan Variano:
It’s going to be fun. I think that there’s something about the pandemic, helped us take the campus a little bit less for granted, and to just feel the joy of being able to walk to your choice of cafes and wave to people along the way, give out some air hugs, I think that’s going to be great. Speaking of air hugs, we did a poll. It seems like people are very excited about connecting via elbow bumps and fist bumps, as well as bows. Now there’s such a variety of bows, I’m really looking forward to seeing when, if bows catch on, what type of bows, because that’s been culturally spread all over the world and it’s always morphed to meet different cultures. So I’m curious what the Berkeley post pandemic bowing culture is going to look like.

Laura Vogt:
Well, that’s going to be interesting. I didn’t know that we were asking people how they wanted to greet each other.

Evan Variano:
It’s an opportunity actually, to be better. So there are some people whose religions suggest that they don’t touch skin with people of the opposite gender, which means it’s really awkward when I reach out my hand and I want to shake hands with them to show them support, but in doing so, I’m also making them make a really difficult choice. So I personally, I’m going to be bowing a lot more because it takes away that awkwardness and confusion when I bow to someone who, what? I will about to someone who in the past the handshake was just confusing for them.

Laura Vogt:
No, I like that idea. You’re taking away that barrier that was there and automatically putting them on uneven footing or uneven ground.

Evan Variano:
Exactly. And so hopefully that’ll make the campus a lot more welcoming. Also, we’re using microphones more often, which is good. In the classroom, there’s always a time when someone says, “I won’t use the mic, I’ll just yell real loud,” and suddenly the back row can’t hear them terribly well. So I think that we’ve gotten a lot better at microphone skills. And so classes will run slightly better because of that. Also, a lot of classes are going to be recorded. The best way to get ready for your midterm exams is to attend class in person. And then when you find a gap in your notes after class, go back and watch the recording to fill in the gap.

Laura Vogt:
That’s a great idea because then one, you’re hearing the information twice now, but then you’re also able to replay it if you’re not understanding something.

Evan Variano:
Yeah. So that’s going to be really helpful. There was already a movement to record classes and make them available, and it’s really up to each professor what they do. And some professors who were unsure about it, had some legitimate concerns. Well, they had to take the plunge and do it anyway, due to the pandemic. And now they’re making much more informed choices. They might still choose not to do it. Their experience might have shown them that it just does not work for their material and their teaching style, but many more will have adopted this and made this part of their class. And one thing that you can be aware of is that you’ll get more out of in-person participation because the research on education shows that having a real live person, that you’re tracking with your eyes and listening to, and I’m hearing like the shuffle of their feet as they go across the floor, that sort of very live life theater, live performance can help you learn.

Evan Variano:
Just like if you ask yourself, would you rather listen to a live recording of your favorite band or go see your favorite band live? So showing up live is great. If you can’t show up live, we understand. The Visa problem is one that we monitor very closely country by country. And they’re going to be accommodations made for people who are stuck somewhere because of political and bureaucratic hurdles. And we understand that, that’s part of what Berkeley wants to do, is stay opening to the international community. So not all of your classmates will be there next to you, and there’s no shame in not showing up. It’s not that they’re being lazy and sleeping in necessarily, they might be very studiously at home in another country waiting for the recording to be posted.

Laura Vogt:
I know. And when you’re registering for classes on classes.berkeley.edu, one of the things that you could use to narrow down the selections is choose ones that are just remote. So they’re trying to make it as easy as possible for you to find ways to be remote if you need to be.

Evan Variano:
That’s a great point. And I will note that hybrid is a very confusing term because there’s many different types of hybrid. Sometimes hybrid means there’s Zoom open in the classroom as it’s happening live, and you’ve got some students Zooming in and other students walking in. Other times hybrid means all material will be posted 24 hours later. So if you’re unsure, you can ask the professor and a lot of classes their B courses and Piazza sites open early, that’s another great way to take a look and understand what’s going to happen. You don’t have to do your first homework yet, but you can read that overview of the class on B courses or Piazza and get a sense that you’ve actually signed up for what you think you want to get into.

Laura Vogt:
And one of the questions that I get from students a lot when they start coming on to campus and studying is how to create that working group or create a study team. Do you have any tips for how students could start creating those connections?

Evan Variano:
Absolutely. First tip, it’s a hard problem so don’t expect it to be over in 10 seconds. You don’t just walk onto campus and say, “Hey, I’m here. I need a study group.” It is a constant effort. You have to maintain your study group with check-ins on how everyone’s feeling, gratitude for the effort put in. You have to anticipate, especially when you’re going to need the study group, because if your study group hits a major scheduling conflict in the week before exams, that’s not so good. And you need to keep pivoting your study group. The study group that works well for your math class may not work well for your chemistry class. And so finding a set of study groups that works for you, that’s big. That’s probably more important than your note taking skills. That’s probably more important than your study habits that allow you to memorize things before an exam, your social skills that allow you to put together a team of people with whom you can learn, that’s a really big deal.

Evan Variano:
So my first tip is, think of it as a major part of your education and treat it as such. People put a lot of attention into joining a club, joining a sports team, joining a fraternity. It’s the same thing. This is a big social and academic effort to find a study group and so don’t underestimate it. It may seem like study groups just fall in the lap of some of your friends and roommates. I doubt that’s true, I think they did have to work for it, or if it did happen to them luckily, that’s just a piece of privilege they have that most of us don’t. So that’s my first tip. My second tip is to be bold. On the first day of class a lot of times everyone wants a study group and no one knows who’s paired up and who’s not. If you put yourself out there, which for some people is easy and for other people is really hard.

Evan Variano:
If you put yourself out there and say to the person next to you, or the person who you’ve seen once or twice before, or the entire class via an anonymous post, “Hey, I wouldn’t mind checking in every Tuesday and Thursday first when we start the homework and second, when we finish the homework, that would be so cool.” Or say, “Hey, I want a study group that does all-nighters on Sundays.” Put it out there, put out what you want, because then the study group is going to form around your work habits. And you’ll be able to find people right off the bat who work the way you do. If you’re about color coded pens, say it out loud, share it with people. And then they’ll say, oh yeah, I want to join the color coded pen team.

Evan Variano:
And if you’re about taking walks in the Berkeley Hills and philosophizing about the class to put it in context, tell them that, tell people around you this, you’re pretty good at code switching between different types of communication skills. So you can say it verbally, you can make posts on the official class websites, you can do it on an unofficial social media site where Berkeley students gather, you can put a handwritten sign up on a bulletin board if you need to, but find a way to express yourself boldly and what you’re looking for. And that can go a long way because if everyone waited for someone else to do it, nothing would ever happen.

Laura Vogt:
I feel like telling someone to be bold, can also parlay into things like going to office hours. Don’t be nervous about going to office hours, be bold and go to them and ask your questions. Or if you’re looking for research and you want to learn more about it, be bold to send an email, to ask if you can get involved.

Evan Variano:
You’re right. And this boldness thing, it does lead to some disparities. I grew up a very privileged White man. And so it was easy for me to be bold because as some professor goes, “Well, you don’t really understand what’s going on here and I’d like to ask you to step out of my office hours and not waste my time,” I can shake it off because within 10 minutes, society is going to be patting me on the back about something else. People who feel that it is absolutely crushing to get put down by a professor are naturally going to be a little bit more careful about being bold. And so I would say stretch yourself, try to be bold now, otherwise it’ll just be the White male students who have high self-confidence that get the resources, the research positions, the hookups with internships, the study groups.

Evan Variano:
So this is a way to level the playing field, is to put yourself out there. And if a professor is rude to you, like I just suggested, and I hope no one ever is. We have a generally friendly bunch. You might hit one on a rough day when they pulled an all-nighter. If you get a finger wagged at you or a grumpy stare from a professor, come talk to me. I’ll help you put it in context. If they sneer at you or you think they sneered at you, but you’re not sure, I’ll help you bounce back. Or your ESS advisor will help you bounce back. Or the ESS programming teams will help you back. Or your RSO will help you bounce back. There’s so many people here who have your back, that when you accidentally, well, when you experience someone who is accidentally being a little bit rude, we want you to get quickly wrapped in others who will lift you back up again.

Laura Vogt:
There are definitely a lot of people that all they want to do is be able to lift people up.

Evan Variano:
Yeah. And when a professor sneers, it might just be that they’ve been living a real unique life as a scholar at the edge of their field, thinking about multi-dimensional challenges to the future of human existence. And it just takes them a minute to come back down to life and remember that they’re working one-on-one with a student at that moment. It can be hard to code switch from research to teaching, to advising, even though professors love those three jobs, there’s times you just get wrapped up in your head in one of them, rather than always being able to do all three simultaneously.

Laura Vogt:
And our freshmen students that are coming in aren’t as well, probably not going into research quite as fast as maybe our transfer students. So what would you tell any, either the freshmen or the transfers that want to get involved in research, what’s the first thing that they should start to do?

Evan Variano:
Good question. One thing I’d suggest is ask yourself how research intersects with your classes. Is your textbook explaining things to you that were researched 200 years ago or 20 years ago or two years ago? It depends what class you’re in. So sometimes your textbooks will give you a great sense of what the research environment is like in your field and other times it won’t. Your math textbook doesn’t really explain what it feels like to do mathematics research right now. And we have plenty of people in the College of Engineering who might take you into an applied maths research project. So ask yourself whether or not your book learning has prepared you to understand the research environment. And if it hasn’t, grab some extra resources, there’s research seminars on all topics, going on at all times in the College of Engineering, you can find them on our events page and you can find them posted on bulletin boards all over the place. So drop into some of those.

Evan Variano:
Just because it’s mostly grad students in the room doesn’t mean you’re not welcome. Freshmen, transfers, everyone is welcome there, members of the community come in sometimes. And so stop into a research seminar and see how someone just spent their last few years in the laboratory, because that’ll get you caught up on what’s happening at the forefront of the field, if your textbook doesn’t include it. Another thing I’d suggest you do is try to hear the stories from other people who have experienced lab research at Berkeley. It’s not all the same. My lab is very different from the person next to me’s lab. So you’re going to learn a lot more from having conversations than you can’t do it all yourself, you’re not going to be able to do a rotation through 25 labs. So learn from each other. When there’s poster sessions and people present their research at the end of the semester, that’s a chance for you to learn 20, 30 different research projects in only an hour. And that’ll give you a sense for what happens because one person’s programming while another person is titrating microbes into a gel.

Laura Vogt:
Those poster sessions, when I’ve gone to them, the students really like to talk about what they did. They want to answer your questions, they want to share it.

Evan Variano:
So those are my two tips. And then also say, what is the role of research in your career? People who are entrepreneurial in nature, really like research because that’s where the hot new ideas come from. People who want to have a structure around them and to not be taking big intellectual risks, they might find research to be downright stressful. Research by definition happens in a place where there are no more textbooks and no more guiding lights and you just try stuff and fail and then try more stuff and fail. Your advisor is called an advisor and not a boss because they say, well, maybe try turning the machine up a little bit. And they don’t know if it’s going to work, they’re just pointing you in directions that they think might work. And so if you like having answers at the back of the book and when you finish your problem, you can check the answer, that’s not what research feels like. Research feels like posting a crazy idea and seeing if the community responds, except this time you post a crazy idea and you see if the universe agrees.

Laura Vogt:
So are you still getting to do research in your role, even though you’re half-time as the Associate Dean for students and your teaching?

Evan Variano:
Absolutely. I’m really excited about this project that I’m on. It’s a big team and I like working on big teams because I get to do stuff that I can never run in my lab by itself. In my lab, we’re always building stuff with our hands, which feels great, but we only build stuff that we can manage with the tools we have available. So we never build anything bigger than a car. Him, we get to build really big stuff like wind turbines or water turbines or power extracting underwater kites, which is what we’re doing on my newest research project. And the idea is if you put a water turbine in an act of fishery, you’re going to be dealing with a lot of boats and a lot of wildlife that don’t necessarily want sharp blades spinning around at high speeds. So our team is trying to do underwater kites that if something bumps into it, they just deform and then reform and go back to generating power and nothing gets harmed. So that’s what we’re working on in the lab.

Laura Vogt:
Oh, my gosh. That sounds awesome.

Evan Variano:
I know it’s really fun. And I look forward to this weekend doing some more air kites flying down at the Berkeley Marina, because it’s good to have a hands-on feeling for the technology. The equations tell us how the kites are going to work best. But I also want to build up my intuition about when kites spiral out of control and when they fly happily.

Laura Vogt:
It’s almost like that tangible thing that you’re able to grasp and hold onto as you learn how it works.

Evan Variano:
Exactly. So never hold off on your opportunities to take your book learning and make them real. Clubs do a great job. I mentioned RSOs already, our engineering student organizations really help students make their book learning connect to the real world in tangible ways.

Laura Vogt:
I know we had a student that was part of the CalSol, the solar car team. And he said his education at Berkeley was basically four years of building solar cars. And then he, oh yeah, I got a degree on the side. So he really liked his time with CalSol.

Evan Variano:
I mean, I wish that our economic situation was such that all of us could spend eight years in college, four years of book learning completely mixed with four years of practical hands-on projects. And I’d love to be there with you, as you do your practical projects and say, “Don’t forget the capacitor, or I told you this, let’s look it up on the nonlinear chart.” I would say all those things, it would be fun to be working side by side. Since we don’t have the benefit of all that time, your professors usually get put at the chalkboard where they can make the biggest impact on your learning, but a lot of us miss the opportunity to work alongside you in the evenings. So at least we’re grateful that the engineering student organizations provide you a chance to do that.

Laura Vogt:
And we’re now starting to run out of time for today. I really appreciate you being here, but is there anything else that you wanted to add that you want to make sure that students know about you or know about coming to Berkeley?

Evan Variano:
Well, I’d say that Berkeley is a special place because you have many opportunities to try and try again. Learning engineering is not an easy path. If you’re doing it right, you will get knocked down now and then. You will try something challenging that you’re not quite ready for at the moment and you’ll take home a piece of paper that says you got a C minus and that’s what we’re aiming for, because that is a place where learning can happen. Berkeley is going to hopefully reach out dozens of hands to you when you get stuck at that learning moment and say, “Well, let’s try it again this way. Have you thought about approaching that learning in this other way?” I really hope that Berkeley is a place where each time you get knocked down, you see a dozen different paths forward. And if you don’t, come talk to me or your ESS advisor.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much Evan for being here today.

Evan Variano:
Thank you all for having me.

Laura Vogt:
And I’m really glad that our students got to know you a little bit better and know about the people that are behind the scenes, working for them and for their success.

Evan Variano:
Yes, no one works harder for your success than you do. And we see you doing that, and that drives all of the success programs that we put together. We hear from students what they could use more of and we put it together. So these programs are often designed by students who have recently graduated and designed with your needs in mind. So please come check us out and see for yourself whether it would work for you.

Laura Vogt:
And thank you everyone for tuning in today to the (Not so) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And I look forward to podcasting with you next week. Thank you.