Aamir Mohamed

President Candidate

I am currently serving as the Co-Vice President of External Relations of the Engineering Students’ Society (ESS), a councilor on the Student’s Council of the University of Alberta Students’ Union (UASU), the General Faculties Council (GFC) and the Engineering Faculty Council (EFC). Previously, I have served as the President of the First Year Engineering Club (FYEC). My experience across governance structures at the University gives me the right approach to expand the horizons of the ESS. This is my campaign to be the next President of the ESS. The undertone for it being increased Advocacy and renewed Engineering Culture.


Advocacy

  • Academics

    • Working on the proposed Undergraduate Programs Reforms. 

    • The programs as a whole have not been reviewed for over a decade or two. 

    • The faculty, under renewed leadership, is looking for a comprehensive and complete overhaul of the undergraduate engineering curriculum.

    • My resolve is to support the advocacy efforts needed to ensure the changes made reflect the interests of the students.

    • Undertake a larger academic survey to gauge student voices on program specifics that they would like to see. 

    • Use this survey information to develop advocacy packages for specific changes/initiatives. 

    • Collaborate to support discipline clubs to advocate to their specific departments to advocate for specific initiatives.

  • Ensuring the faculty implements proposed First Year Program changes.

    • The faculty has shown progress in regards to larger cohorts and ENGG 160. However, there are many collaborative efforts that need to be made between the faculties of engineering and science. 

    • My goal is to specifically advocate for reduced course load and accurate representation of each discipline in the FY program.

  • Project Groups

    • Work with the faculty to establish and increase sponsorship/funding opportunities.

    • Advance the established processes on space optimization and renovation.

      • Advocating for newer workspaces. 

      • Continue pushing resources for current space renovations.

      • Adding another short term space similar to ETLC 3-002.

      • Advocating for a prominent designed-for-use long term project team space.

    • Advocate to include project group involvement for micro-credentials into the engineering program.

      • Set up eligibility criterias based on seniority and involvement. 

  • Research & Advocacy

    • Work on launching multiple surveys gauging student voices and opinions on the first year program and the undergraduate program as a whole.

    • Expand the scope to include taking up advocacy initiatives independently in collaboration with other ESS departments, especially EDID.

First Year Initiatives

  • Orientation - GEER 101

    • Based on the engagement issues we have and my aim to rejuvenate the incoming student population, I would like to rebrand and expand our first year orientation.

      • Lots of events, lots of fun stuff. 

      • We are weird, we are engineers. 

      • Making sure the students have a lasting impression of the ESS and the Discipline Clubs. 

      • The ultimate experience that makes everyone remember the ESS.

    • Introduce first years to all discipline clubs and make sure they get into the community initiatives the clubs have to offer and also get a glimpse into different disciplines.

    • Promoting the inclusion and togetherness of all first year students.

      • Make sure we have resources available to provide a safe space to disclose and act upon any untoward experiences.

  • Establish an Associate VP First Year to unlock FYEC’s full potential.

    • Work with FYEC to create guiding documents for upcoming FYEC execs.

    • Have more ESS – FYEC executive interactions. 

    • Improve financial management by giving AVP FY signing authority.

    • Eliminate a few redundant positions in FYEC.

    • Create a non-authoritative, non-voting First Year Council to support the operations of the FYEC. 

      • Consists of people who lost in the elections. Thus, not eliminating interested students from student governance.

Engagement and Culture

The ESS has a maximum engagement of 20-25% engineering students which peaks around the Career Fair and the GEER Week.  

  • The all-round engagement is hardly around 5-6%, which is not optimal.

  • My aim is to overhaul how the engineering culture is at the UofA. That’s why I want to start from day-0 (orientation) and eventually the cultural aspects change. 

  • Orientation is the only day when the ESS has the opportunity to engage with all incoming first year students.

    • Work bottom-up with engaging initiatives for first years starting from Orientation.

    • Make it a long-term strategic initiative, so 2-3 years down the line, the community is completely redefined.

    • Initiating an engineering culture revolving around community and support.

    • Have more in-person involvement to bring in people who do not follow the ESS on social media.

    • The culture we build should encompass all spheres of student interest.

      • More experiential or technical stuff to engage students who are not into large social events.

  • Experiential Learning

    • Work with the faculty, discipline clubs and project groups to create a culture of engagement with experiential learning activities.

    • Help each discipline club launch one experiential learning initiative targeted towards first and second year students.

  • Revitalizing the Undergraduate Student Staff Committee (USSC).

    • It is a historical body promoting student-faculty collaboration. 

    • Meets to discuss initiatives undertaken by each group and how it can benefit others.

    • Adjudicates teaching awards and promotes healthy teaching practices in the faculty of engineering.

    • Has not met in recent years (was either not constituted or did not undertake anything if constituted). 

Advancing EDID

  • Have a more specific leadership oriented EDID training.

    • Can be given to all ESS volunteers + Discipline club execs. 

  • Creating a larger public EDID workshop for the larger engineering community. 

    • Work on facilitating and popularizing these workshops.

      • Potentially collaborate with the office of EDI in CNAS.

    • Promote all EDID related asynchronous resources available. 

  • Supporting and facilitating the advancement of the Indigenous involvement through promoting student bodies associated with Indigenous initiatives. 

    • Collaborate to look into possibilities of an affirmative engineering program selection process for Indigenous students.

  • Establish collaborative programs with social, cultural and community organizations to help ease women and gender minorities into engineering and associated leadership positions.

Academics & Services

  • The Office of Academics & Services as it is now is the primary ESS liaison working on all academics related advocacy. However, it also deals with a multitude of academic services of incredible importance.

  • Redefine slightly to ensure the portfolio is efficient in its core responsibilities and the ESS is efficient in its advocacy goals.

    • Core Responsibilities - Academic Services and facilitating academic initiatives across the ESS and discipline clubs through the Academic Committee.

    • Secondary Responsibilities - To facilitate advocacy with large collaborations with the Office of the President especially the Director of Research & Advocacy.

ESS and Discipline Club Collaborations

  • Introduce a Graduation Committee

    • There is enough interest to warrant it.

    • ESS helps in facilitating a grand combined graduation ceremony for all engineering students in collaboration with all the discipline clubs.

      • If a combined graduation ceremony is not feasible, this committee’s business would be to adjudicate the funds available for grad appropriately.

    • There will be a graduation fund from the ESS if the proposed FAMF passes.

    • Have a BoD discussion to fine tune details and membership.

      • Non-voting chair from the ESS, membership could be one vote from each club, does not have to be a fixed member, each club has one vote.

  • Experiential Learning Initiatives (ELI)

    • The ESS can help facilitate creation of at least one experiential learning initiative from each discipline club.

    • The ESS will expand collaboration between the faculty’s ELI team and the discipline clubs.

    • If the proposed FAMF passes, the ESS will have an ELI fund to support these initiatives.

Sponsorships and Corporate Relations

  • Recreate how sponsorships work and set an ambitious overall goal.

    • Create a new general sponsorship tier for companies to have their name attached to the ESS as a whole.

    • Relook how benefits work on the event specific sponsorships. 

  • Expand and diversify with the help of different faculty units (especially Engineering Career Connections and the Office of Advancement).

  • Look into establishing long-term connections irrespective of sponsorships.

  • Establish a support network for students in co-op, so that they can still be connected to the university community.

    • Use this community to establish connections with a diverse range of companies.

Organizational Initiatives

  • Work to bring out the ESS executives into more public spaces.

    • Attend and promote discipline club events and initiatives as general members and not as execs.

    • Increase accessibility through more prominently available feedback mechanisms.

    • Make available year-round appointments for discussions and feedback to the executive.

    • Potentially run a know your execs campaign similar to the UASU.

    • Incorporate this into executive responsibilities.

  • Expand Faculty Relations.

    • Maximize interactions between the executive team and the faculty.

    • Ensure both sides are aware of who would be the best contact for specific interactions and requests.

  • Explore and launch an ambitious 3-year strategic plan. 

    • Improves organizational stability. 

    • Include important yet volatile initiatives which tend to fall through years.

    • Create academic and cultural advocacy deadlines to achieve (include scope for collaboration with the faculty).

    • Any inter-departmental, inter-faculty, regional or national initiatives with large-scale or multi-year implications.

  • Introduce more ESS-wide collaborative events to foster team building and increase opportunities for inter-departmental collaboration.

    • Everybody knows everybody type scenario would be ideal.  

  • Formalize executive and board bonding activities.

    • Incredible initiatives this year, expand onto that.

    • Explore both small and large-scale activities.

Communications

  • Work with the Office of Communications to reinvent our marketing practices.

    • Explore avenues to increase engagement. 

    • Expand onto the more popular forms of media such as reels and teasers to create an atmosphere of hype and fun.

      • Build on the fabulous results from this year.

    • Reinventing our graphic design process.

  • Create a more robust system to support and amplify discipline club initiatives.

    • ESS can automatically repost initiatives from discipline clubs or engineering groups that align with the interests of the ESS.

    • Work to make the processes a bit more lenient.

  • Collaborate to reinvent the ESS website completely.

    • Make information more accessible.

    • Include pages with live feeds, to have up to date information.

    • Overall update of pictures and thumbnails.