ESS 803: ESS Programs Introduction
Marvin Lopez, the Director of Student Programs in Engineering Student Services (ESS), joins us this week to introduce the programming element of ESS. This includes the programs, resources and opportunities that support a student’s success in four areas: wellness, academic, professional and leadership. Like Marvin says, “You can’t spell success without ESS!”
Important links/locations from this week’s episode:
- ESS Programs
- PREP
- T-PREP
- Berkeley Mentorship Cohort
- Center for Access to Engineering Excellence (CAEE), academic support
- LeaderShape
- Student teams and organizations
- Transfer ambassadors and transfer center
- Events & Workshops
Keep up-to-date with ESS programming:
- ESS Newsletter
- CAEE Instagram
- Transfer Center Instagram
- Berkeley Mentorship Cohort Instagram
- ESS Instagram
Laura Vogt:
Hello and welcome to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt, the Associate Director of Marketing and Communications in the College of Engineering. And today I’m excited that we have Marvin Lopez, the director of Student Programs and Engineering Student Services, to introduce the programming, who is such a vital part of engineering student services, or, as we regularly call it, ESS. Hi Marvin, welcome to the podcast.
Marvin Lopez:
Hi Laura.
Laura Vogt:
Tell us about yourself and your role in Berkeley engineering.
Marvin Lopez:
Absolutely. First of all, let me thank you for affording me the time to share what we do in the ESS programs team and share what we do for our students and a little bit about me and what makes me so excited to be here. So believe it or not, this is almost my ninth year in this role. And as you know and I want to share with the team on the podcast, I’m also an engineer, I have a CS background from another fellow UC in the Southern California area.
And I’m also first generation, like many of the students that we serve, I’ve been through these very programs myself. So doing this to me is very personal and brings lots of joy. And so I’ve been in industry for many years and was an engineer, was a programmer, and then moved into recruiting and diversity programs, and through a series of non-linear happenstance, coincidences, landed this role, which I love to do. And so to me it’s a pleasure to do this work because nothing makes me happier than to see our students succeed.
Laura Vogt:
And what I think I really love about you and your passion for this job is that you were so excited about it, you went back to school and got a master’s.
Marvin Lopez:
I did, I did. And I always like to tell the students that you can teach an old dog new tricks. So I did graduate last May with a master’s in education, so I completed the certificate through Berkeley Extension and then took that to USF and finished my master’s in education to really cement my knowledge in this space. And more than anything, to really declare that I am here to stay, that I’m staying in the education field, my engineering background and my corporate background is done, and this is it for me until I retire. So it’s a delightful opportunity to really get to know the theory and the thinking behind the work that I do to help me do it better and to do it more impactful. So it is pretty cool to have done that.
Laura Vogt:
Yeah, I just think it’s awesome that it was so important to you to even just continue learning about it and just get better at what you do.
Marvin Lopez:
Thank you.
Laura Vogt:
And thank you so much for being here today. I’m excited to be able to talk about programs.
Marvin Lopez:
My pleasure.
Laura Vogt:
We do so many things for the students and I know it can be hard to keep track of them, so I want to make sure that they know what it is and the history behind it and the people that maybe are about it. So can you tell us about the programs and the services that are available to students for the ESS and who your team is?
Marvin Lopez:
Absolutely. So to take it from the top, engineering student services is a hub of support for all undergraduates in the College of Engineering. So that is first and foremost. We do serve as, our associate dean likes to say, from cradle to career, so we do have a segment that does outreach and we do have a segment of ESS that does grad school, but the core of ESS is the undergraduate support. And it’s comprised of our advising and policy team that ensures that our students are on track to graduate and address all their requirements and policies. And then there’s a programs team, which is a co-curricular support, so all the programming outside of the classroom in support of their academic journey. And that’s what my team does. So actually we have a small team that actually delivers a lot for our students and we deliver across four pillars.
But let me tell you first about why we do what we do and the intention of the impact. And first of all is I always have my little pithy saying that you can’t spell success without ESS. And I really do believe that because what we do is really to facilitate their success. So what we do and the philosophy behind it is what I call the four Cs of success, which is all that we do is driven to provide, one, community, so we provide a sense of community and all that we do and for students to come together, celebrate each other, support each other, and thrive together. We teach them, we help them collaborate, so facilitate collaboration to work together, study together, teach each other. We teach them the cultural capital to navigate Berkeley. So we enhance their cultural capital.
A lot of our students, in fact, all our students bring resilience, drive ambition, but they may not know the cultural capital to navigate Berkeley and navigate academia, navigate the professional world, and so we teach them that cultural capital all leading to the final C, which is confidence. And this is to have the confidence, to gain the confidence, to embody the confidence, to do the things they came here to do, to change the world in the way that they see fit. And so those four Cs are what drive us to do what we do, or the philosophy behind what we do. Now, so what do we do?
We work on four pillars, and I always think of it as a pyramid because they lead to each other. Starting with wellness. So our first level is wellness in the sense that we support them, we provide programs and services to support their wellness, so mental, physical well-being, because if you’re not well, if you’re not eating well, if you don’t have access to a place to be, if you’re feeling lonely, the rest doesn’t matter. And so we provide them wellness program, then we provide academic. So the next level is academic support, and I’ll mention that in a little bit what that looks like. And then I think of it as next is professional, so your professional career readiness to do the things you came here to do, whether it’s industry, a startup or research. And then finally, leadership. One of the missions of the College of Engineering is to educate engineering leaders, and so leadership is at the top, I think of it as that pyramid.
And so those are the four key areas that we work with. So what do we provide in those spaces? So some of the key programs we have. In terms of the wellness, and everything really addresses wellness, but we work closely with our psychological services team to provide workshops and programs for things like knitting. We have a session for knitting, for how to de-stress by knitting. I’m thinking of providing a session on origami, just sitting at your desk and building origami. We work, again, with a psychological services team to provide workshops on things like anxiety, addressing the imposter syndrome, helping each other out to be okay. So we do that through a number of programs. In terms of academics, a big part of what we provide and a key element of our services is The Center for Access to Engineering Excellence, which is currently a physical space 325 Davis Hall, while we have the new building completed, where we provide tutoring.
The heart of our academic support is tutoring, so we provide free tutoring from 09:00 to 09:00 every day except Fridays, which is 09:00 to 05:00. And we engage with upper division students who have done well in classes, who are both willing and able to tutor their peers in nearly 40, 50 classes by now. So all of the lower division, math, physics, chemistry, CS, double E, and even a little bit of upper division, we provide that tutoring. And what I want to emphasize to our students listening is that tutoring is not remedial, tutoring is not when you’re in trouble. Tutoring is simply to get ahead and stay ahead. And I know that our students are high achievers, and I know many of our students were tutors themselves in high school, and so to them very often they think, oh, why would I need tutoring? I was a tutor myself.
Well, I’m a big believer that what got you here won’t get you there. And so the skills, the things you did before won’t necessarily get you to the next level. And so you might’ve been a tutor before, well, now you can get tutoring. And if you’re doing well, you can also be a tutor. But tutoring is really to get ahead and stay ahead. That’s all it is. And if you do need it to address challenges with classes, if you’re not doing well, then all the more to come and see your tutor. But we welcome all to come and see, visit our tutors that engage with them on a regular basis. In addition to that and to promote academic wellness, The Center for Access to Engineering Excellence provides, or as we call it, the center, provides a study space, so spaces for students to study together, and a very welcoming, friendly space to come study together, to just hang out. There’s snacks, there’s coffee.
We actually have a list where you can suggest what snacks you want to have, so we listen very closely to that and we provide whatever students want. Generally not healthy snacks, but that’s okay. We serve the audience. And mostly we provide a place for students to be and to be well together. Another key program that we provide that addresses a lot of this is the Berkeley Mentorship Cohort. And I think you’ve heard in a separate podcast about these programs specifically. And the Berkeley Mentorship Cohort is really a program to provide mentors. And we’re growing the program into another phase, but for now it’s providing peer-to-peer mentors, so upper division students mentor lower division students, in particular incoming freshmen with mentors who have been there, done that, and so who can guide our incoming students and can share their experience and give them tips, and the tips and tricks, the unwritten rules to navigate Berkeley.
And currently, like I said, it’s a peer-to-peer program. We’re expanding it soon to be professionals and alumni mentoring students. So we have that. Essentially, currently we have peer-to-peer mentoring students on the way in and then we’ll have professionals mentoring students on the way out. And so if you want to mentor, if you’d like to be a mentor, come see us and join the program and hear from your peers, and get paired with a peer who’s more than willing and able to share their experience with you, and to at the least make you feel welcome and included in the college.
Then we have a professional workshop, and the professional piece and the career readiness is a big part of what we do and that I personally do because of my background in recruiting and industry. So we have a whole series of programs and workshops that do everything from building your elevator pitch and crafting your elevator pitch all the way to negotiating your job offers. So as I came from recruiting, I give you the secrets of recruiting and the secrets of job offer negotiation that perhaps recruiters won’t tell you, and everything in between, so LinkedIn, interviewing, networking, everything, the entire life cycle of recruiting. And we put that together either often myself in partnership with the career engagement team, or some of our corporate partners also present with me to share that expertise and provide that career readiness for students so that they land the thing they came here to do.
We also partner with our grad program, so ESS graduates, and landing graduate school, or pursuing graduate school and research because that’s another track that’s important to students, not just industry. And then we also partner, for example, with the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology on entrepreneurship. So they come and speak to our students and present the opportunity that they have to pursue entrepreneurship, to pursue an idea from literally idea to company, and it’s a really cool program and opportunities that they have, and so we work with them as well. And then finally we have leadership, and we have a number of opportunities on the leadership side to develop student leadership. And it’s really focused on two areas. One is personal leadership, to be a personal leader. And we have two key programs that we offer for that.
One is leader shape, which is a three, four days now, no, it’s five days program in the Redwoods in January and the darkest days of the winter when it’s nice to be inside. And we go up to the Redwoods and we spend six days or five days with 60 students guiding them to conversations on how to be an engineering leader, how to be a thoughtful leader, an inclusive leader, have a sense of mission, be an ethical leader, and they often come back transformed and really understanding better who they are as leaders, who they are as engineers, and ultimately who they are as people. And so we have that program. And then in the spring, professor Lisa Pruitt and I co-teach a course called Engineering Your Life.
And it’s really a class that continues at the topic of LeaderShape, but it is just independent, to have these same conversations around leadership and what does it mean to be a leader, what are the leadership styles, how do you influence, how do you inspire others, how do you resolve conflict, all the key skills that aren’t taught in the classroom that you need as a professional out in the world. So we have that class as well. And so I invite everyone to join in the spring. It’s a one unit class, really fun. And then on the leadership club side, we support our student organizations. And we not only support our student organizations themselves, but we also incentivize our student organizations to be more inclusive.
So we have something called the Blue and Gold Certification program where we incentivize our student clubs to be inclusive in who they have in their membership, that they’re open to anyone or as open as they can be, because, ultimately, remember that our students have paid through their fees for these clubs. The clubs are funded by the student fee, so they should have access to them. And so the more inclusive these student clubs are, the more we reward them with visibility, funding, support, and those that choose not to, that’s okay. They operate otherwise. And through that, we’ve seen a change in who’s in these clubs, who runs these clubs, the leadership development of these clubs, the transition of these clubs, and greater access to the clubs, because clubs present a great opportunity to develop leadership skills, managerial skills, innovation, all kinds of skills that are not taught in the classroom. And so we have that as well.
And so this, what I just described, is available to every single undergraduate in the College of Engineering. So there’s nothing that we have that’s exclusive to anyone. And if you go to the center on any day, it is literally a diverse, inclusive place. There’s people from all walks of life, all years, all majors working, studying together, and rising together. And one community that I want to really highlight that we work on closely, and we have, in fact, one of my team members is exclusively dedicated to them is a transfer community. We have a community college transfer incoming class of about 230 students every year.
And so we have another center, the Engineering Transfer Center in Sutardja Dai Hall, where transfer students can come together and study together, commiserate, share, have snacks, because they’re transfer students in a different place in life. They’ve come later in their careers, they have different challenges. And so by having this transfer center, they can come together and work together as a community. And we provide programming for them, we have transfer ambassadors who are peers that help us serve their peers better. And it’s something we’re very excited about and enhancing our support for our transfer students. And the sum total of all this helps create those four Cs, the community, collaboration, capital, and the confidence, and we’re delighted to provide that and more. There’s lots of things that I didn’t even include in my not so brief introduction to what we do.
Laura Vogt:
Introduce us to your team. Who all do you have working with you?
Marvin Lopez:
Yes, so we actually have a small team and I like to think of a team that punches above its weight. I have a team of four that provides all of this in partnership with a number of partners across campus and across the college. So we work closely with our development team, and, as I mentioned, Sutardja Dai, the SAET and the GLOBE team and MET and everybody, and our department, of course, because otherwise we couldn’t do that alone.
Key people that we want to know is Luis Castillo manages the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. So if you’re interested in tutoring, if you’re interested in being a tutor, if you’re interested in what they offer and borrowing a laptop or you need clothing for an interview, Luis is a key person. So he runs an amazing team at the center that manages all these pieces, this whole operation. He’s also doing the same certificate that I did. Actually, no, he’s doing the master’s that I did. So he is on his way to also finish that, which is pretty cool.
Then Marcia Breslin Cantillana is our manager of the Berkeley Mentorship Cohort, and she has done an amazing job in expanding that program and continue to expand the program to create more opportunities for mentorship. I cannot overstate how important it is to have a mentor. I think all none of us would be here without mentors. I’m speaking for myself personally. And so we provide that opportunity. And so Marcia has taken that and really blown it up. So if you’re interested in mentorship, please see Marcia.
Then, Heidi Maqueos is a recent arrival to my team and she manages the entire transfer experience. And I’m proud to say, and I’ll toot our horn, that we’re one of the few organizations, and certainly engineering organizations that I know of that has a dedicated person to just the transfer experience. We have a little sticker that says, “We love transfers,” we mean it, we really mean it, and we put our money where our mouth is. So she manages all of the transfer experience, our transfer program in the summer, the transfer center, the transfer ambassadors, the transfer link class in the fall for incoming transfer students and more, whatever other ideas we come up with.
And finally, Britt Mazorra, also a recent addition to my team, manages what I call the freshman success initiative, largely focused currently on the prep program, the pre-engineering program that is a program really targeted at first generation, low-income, underserved students that are the best of the best from California, but may not have had the same access to all the resources and role models as their peers. And so we have this program specifically for them to help them close those preparation gaps, those resource gaps, to make sure that they thrive at Berkeley and beyond.
So between the four of us, that, and myself, we deliver all the things that I just mentioned, as I said, in partnership with lots of partners and stakeholders through the college. And we’re very proud of, I’m very proud of the team because the one thing that drives us all that keeps us here is student success. So for all five of us, nothing makes us happier than to see our students succeed and land internships and go overseas for a research experience, or simply get an A in the class is what drives us to do what we do. And also, of course, we have the front desk team with Crystal Banuelos who manages the front desk as students come in for their appointments and helps us put everything together behind the scenes, so I shouldn’t leave her out as well. So that is my team, and delighted to work with them every day.
Laura Vogt:
And I think it’s awesome all the variety of programming that you have available for students, because you covered just so many different areas and topics. So I know this one’s a little bit more off-topic, but I think it’s relevant of can you tell me what belonging means to you and how you’re working to make sure through these programs that the engineering students have that sense of belonging in engineering student services or at Berkeley Engineering?
Marvin Lopez:
Right. Belonging to me, it can have different definitions and it means different things to different people, but, to me, belonging means that you feel included, respected, seen, and heard in a space, in an environment, in an institution. I love metaphors and maybe this one’s a little simplistic, but it’s the idea that it’s not just being invited to a dance, but actually that people want to dance with you is how I see it. It’s a simple metaphor. But it’s really a sense of feeling seen and heard and respected. And it’s not on you to do that. It’s the organization, the institution, the space that needs to make you feel seen and heard and respected and included. And so when those things are present, you feel like you belong, that you’re comfortable walking into a space and you’re wanted, you’re seen, you’re heard, you’re invited, you’re respected, and you’re celebrated for being there.
And so what do we do? So that sounds great, that’s all nice, but what does that look like? Everything that we do has that in mind. For example, a key part of belonging starts with representation is ensuring that when somebody walks into a space, they see themselves through the people there, they see themselves through the staff that supports them, they see themselves through the students that are tutoring them or that are supporting them, that are in their clubs. So representation is critical, and that’s why we’re still focused on incentivizing our clubs to be more inclusive and bring in students from all walks of life in the college, why we have representation in the center of who works in the center and who’s in the center to represent the entire college literally. I should point out that literally three quarters of the entire College of Engineering comes to the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence.
As small as it is, literally that many people come to the center at one point during the year to take advantage of something we have, whether it’s the study jam, the alive week celebration, or the tutoring, or the snacks, or anything else, because it’s a welcoming space where students literally will welcome you with a friendly space, invite you to come back, ask you anything you need, and it’s those little things that matter, those little things that really make you feel like you belong. And so we make an effort that everything we do has that in mind. We’re explicit about welcoming students, we’re explicit about inviting everyone in the college, and welcoming in the college. I mentioned that we have a list of snacks that what people might want, and so we pay attention to that list and we bring the snacks that students want.
And as small as that may seem, the fact that you put down you want spicy Doritos, and the next day there’s spicy Doritos, you feel like you’ve been heard. And if you don’t have a class that you need tutoring for and you tell us, and we go find tutors for that class, you feel like you’ve been heard and so you feel like you belong. And it’s those little things that we do on a daily basis that make students feel like they belong. And so they tell us that they do. The million-dollar question, of course, is how do we get everybody to do this and to come to the center? And so all I can say is, and I invite you, all students as you come into the center and to come into the college, come check it out, bring your friends, and see what it’s all about. And hopefully you will feel the same sense of belonging as your peers do and you’ll provide also a sense of belonging to your peers. And together we can make it even better.
Laura Vogt:
And I’m going to link in the link section of each podcast, the video for how to find the center, because we have a video that the students made of them actually walking there because it’s a little-
Marvin Lopez:
That’s right.
Laura Vogt:
There’s a lot of construction going on in our little neck of the woods right now, so I want to make sure that you can find it. So we’ll have a map and we’ll have the link to the video.
Marvin Lopez:
Awesome.
Laura Vogt:
We don’t want it to be something that you’re like, “Well, they said it was there, but where is it?”
Marvin Lopez:
Right. It’s a little hard to find. Once you do, it’s a treasure trove of the lights that you’ll find.
Laura Vogt:
And do you have an example of any of the programming that has supported students that has really stuck out to you or more memorable than maybe something else?
Marvin Lopez:
Absolutely. There’s countless numbers of examples that I can think of.
Laura Vogt:
I’m sure it’s not just one.
Marvin Lopez:
Yeah, I can tell you that from the workshop, the professional development workshops alone, there’s a number of students that have landed internships through the process that I’ve taught them, from the elevator pitch, right through the job offer negotiation, who have landed internships and research opportunities at places they never thought they would be. We have a partnership with BlackRock, one of the largest asset management companies in the world, and I coached a number of students to do that, to go through that process in the interview for that, and landed an internship at BlackRock. Another student landed an opportunity to do research in Kentucky of all places through some of the programming we had last year to introduce students to [inaudible 00:25:07] research and went to Kentucky to do research.
Through the mentorship program, I know a number of students have told me how their mentor guided them to do things they had never heard of, they guided them to research experience overseas or simply told them how to navigate office hours. A lot of our students don’t know the importance and the value of office hours. And so I know for many of our students have told me personally how their mentor guided them and gave them the confidence to go to office hours and engage with faculty. So we have lots of examples of students that have achieved things that they didn’t think they would or even was in their radar because of engaging with our programs, either with their mentor or their tutor or the professional development workshops, or LeaderShape. There’s a student that I know, some years ago came back from LeaderShape and ended up becoming, I believe, vice mayor or mayor even of one of the smaller cities in East Bay, I think you might know this one, Laura, from way back when.
Laura Vogt:
I do remember that.
Marvin Lopez:
Who literally became an elected official because of having been inspired through his experience at LeaderShape, others that have become ASU state senators or leaders of student organizations. So it’s all over the place that kind of impact it makes. And we know just from our data and anecdotally that the more students engage with our programs, the more they do, the better they feel about their experience.
So if they come to tutoring and they engage in clubs and they go to LeaderShape and they partner and they engage with GLOBE is one of an organization, not in ESS, but that we partner closely with to expose to or receive experience. If they do that, the sum total of all that helps them do better, have a better academic and career college experience than if they simply go to class, go home and study. So there’s a million examples that I can give you, without naming names, the benefit of what we do.
Laura Vogt:
And I think one of the most important things about all this is how do we find out about it? So how can students keep track of what’s coming?
Marvin Lopez:
Yes, so we have a social media presence. So not only the ESS Instagram page, but we have our own Instagram presence. So all the particular Center for Access to Engineering has social media presence, the BMC, the Berkeley Mentorship Court has our own presence, the transfer programs, and the transfer world has their own presence, and, of course, ESS has an umbrella to all that, but I cannot stress enough, and I know this is not perhaps how our current generation thinks in terms of communications, but email is critical. And every Monday afternoon, and I cannot thank you enough for what you do in getting that newsletter out every single Monday, and I tell them if it’s not in the newsletter, it does not exist.
I may be exaggerating a little bit, but the newsletter is critical for our students to keep track of and to read and to really understand, because everything that we do in ESS and with our partners is in that newsletter. So upcoming workshops, upcoming events, the tutoring schedule, links to the tutoring schedule are all in the newsletter, scholarship opportunities are in the newsletter, overseas opportunities in the newsletter. So please, please read the newsletter in addition to staying on top of our Instagram pages and our Twitter feeds and all of that, or X feeds I guess is now, because it’s all out there, but you need to stay on top of these things to make sure you know the latest, greatest around all that we do.
Laura Vogt:
Yeah, I like that we, even with the newsletter, get submissions for it from student organizations to tell us about events that they have coming up.
Marvin Lopez:
That’s right.
Laura Vogt:
I’ve been doing the newsletter weekly for 13 years now, which I just realized I was thinking about that this year, I was like, “Wow, I’ve been doing this weekly for 13 years.”
Marvin Lopez:
Wow.
Laura Vogt:
And it’s not one of those things that’s just this rote thing that you just put it out. I take the time to really pay attention to what we put in there and make sure that we’re getting the information to students, and so I think it’s an important way to learn. And you can actually look at the archives if you wanted to at engineering.berkeley.edu/essnews, which is a great way that if you for some reason you’re like, “Hey, I didn’t see it in the newsletter, I don’t remember that,” you can go back and check it.
Marvin Lopez:
And funny you mentioned that because I read the newsletter because there are things that I don’t know that don’t necessarily come through my team that are coming from other places that I read to keep on top of, deadlines for all the various academic deadlines, or things that are happening through other, programs and our departments in particular, and so I use it to keep on top of things myself. So I cannot emphasize enough for our students, read, read the newsletter every Monday afternoon, because it’s the final word on everything we have in ESS. And then, of course, our website, so we have our website, engineering.berkeley.edu, where we have our events, and you can learn about our team, and the particular tutoring schedules if you’re interested in that, and finding out exactly what class is being tutored or there’s tutoring for, go online on our website and find out all that.
Laura Vogt:
Yeah. And the website’s got a really robust search engine, then that does a really good job of pulling up the information that you need if you start looking for it.
Marvin Lopez:
Absolutely.
Laura Vogt:
I also think to make sure that you ask people. If you have a question about something, make sure you ask. You’ve got advisors, you have the programs team, you’ve got peer advisors, the CAE student workers and tutors, the transfer ambassadors, mentors, just your fellow students.
Marvin Lopez:
Absolutely.
Laura Vogt:
It’s cliche to say there’s no dumb question, but I really don’t think there’s a dumb question, especially if you just don’t have the information on something.
Marvin Lopez:
Not at all. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. And as I tell a lot of students, ask, you may get, don’t ask, you won’t get. And literally students that have asked for all kinds of support, things that they thought they may not get, they received. The laptop broke and they asked, “Can I get a new one or can I borrow one?” Yes, we have a program for that. “I’d like to go overseas and I’ve never been overseas, how does that work?” We connect them with the GLOBE team and they have programs overseas, so there’s hardly anything that we can’t provide you or at least help you with, but only if you ask.
Laura Vogt:
Yeah, there’s even financial information. If you need help with something financial, we’ve got resources and people to connect you with.
Marvin Lopez:
Yep, exactly. So ask, you may get, don’t ask, you don’t get.
Laura Vogt:
Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you want to add?
Marvin Lopez:
Yeah. The three things that I wanted to mention.
One is our new building. So you alluded to earlier, there’s a lot of construction going on. So those of you that are coming into the college, or you may not have seen it yet, but you will, and you’ll be wondering what is all this noise? Well, we are getting our new engineering center in summer of next year, so after your first year here. And we are delighted for that because the entire first floor will be our space, Engineering Student Services. So everything that I just talked about will be located in that first floor. So our Center for Access to Engineering Excellence, our own offices, other spaces for psychological services, potentially a wellness center, that’ll all be down in the first floor. So we are delighted to see that. And the sooner the better, that’s open so we can all be back together in one place, versus the scattered approach we have right now. So that’s one.
Two is we are always open to ideas. So if you are coming in, if our students coming in with ideas of the things we could provide that we don’t tell them, come to the center and email me, email anyone on my team that I mentioned, email our ESS, ess@berkeley.edu, and tell us the kind of things that you think would be useful for you that we might have thought of putting on, whether it’s a program or a class that you need tutoring for, tell us what you need and we’ll try to make it happen.
And, finally, on the other side of that, if you want to work with us, if you want to be a student assistant in the center or a tutor or help in any of the things that we do, come see us. We hire and we hire. None of this is our volunteers. All our students are paid for what they do. So come see us.
And we’d love to have you be part of the family that supports your peers. And we do that all the time. One of the things we like to say is that what we provide is in engineering, for engineers, largely by engineers. So let’s make that true. And come work with us.
Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciated your time and this really interesting conversation that we have about what’s there for students.
Marvin Lopez:
My pleasure, Laura, it’s always delightful to talk to you and always delightful to welcome our students and share all that we do, and hope to see them soon, and go there.
Laura Vogt:
And I want to add that students can actually check out an episode from last year with Marvin about career readiness, where we talked more in-depth about resources available to make sure that students are ready to look for internships and jobs and other things along those lines. And, finally, thank you to everyone for tuning in to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. We’ll be back next week with more information and resources for your time as a Berkeley engineer. Thank you.