News Release
Industry: Meet the Jacobs School's Students
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| Photos/IDEA Student Center Assistant Renn Darawali |
Students Dine, Meet with Recruiters During Professional Evening with Industry Event
San Diego, Calif. Dec. 20, 2013 -- Intel. Microsoft. Cisco. These were three of the 18 science and tech companies that sent recruiters to meet with Jacobs School students at the fifth annual Professional Evening with Industry Nov. 22 at the Price Center. Put on by three student diversity organizations–the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)–in conjunction with the IDEA Student Center, the event gave Jacobs School students the opportunity to dine with the recruiters as well as industry engineers before a career fair, where they could hand over resumes and talk about job or internship opportunities.
Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Albert P. Pisano opened the night with a few words of support for the event, before keynote speaker and 2011 computer science alum Hina Patel took the stage. Currently a software quality engineer for the event’s corporate sponsor, Salesforce, Patel talked of the challenges for minority students to enter the field.
“Being the only girl in some of my classes was very overwhelming, and it’s something that a lot of females face who study technology,” Patel said after her keynote address. “Tonight, I really wanted to voice how underrepresented students can overcome that challenge.”
Nearly 500 students registered to attend this year’s event, said NSBE Vice President of External Affairs Amanuel Weldemariam. “The event provides experience for students to get to know how to interact with professionals in the industry, and get the opportunity to land an internship,” Weldemariam said. “But it’s also important in that it helps students practice interviewing.”
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Chyheim Jackson-Burgess, a second year computer science student, said he most looked forward to getting some interview practice and becoming familiar with the recruitment process in the hopes of “scoring an interview” the next time around. Chemical engineering student and IDEA Scholar Ismail Ibrahim said he was excited to talk to the Genentech and Boeing representatives.
ESRI recruiter Kristin Anderson – a class of 2006 UC San Diego alum – said the Professional Evening with Industry is a prime place to find UC San Diego talent.
“I really like the atmosphere here and I think the dinner is a good component of the event,” Anderson said. “It makes the students more comfortable and they become more at ease to talk to employers, whether that’s for a position six months from now or an internship for three years until they graduate.”
The proceeds from the evening will be split three ways between NSBE, SWE and SHPE.
NSBE President Matthew Hogains said the group will use the money to send some of its members to the national convention held in Nashville next March. SHPE plans to use the money earned from the event to fund a few of the organization’s community outreach programs, including the group’s upcoming “Noche de Sciencias” during which members do experiments for local high school students and teach parents about the college application process, said Vice President Wendy Vivar.
Media Contacts
Ioana Patringenaru
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-0899
ipatrin@ucsd.edu