Industry, MESA train Southern California student leaders

Over a dozen global corporations partnered with MESA to provide intensive leadership skills sessions to some 100 Southern California undergraduate leaders in engineering-related student organizations. The workshop was held August 25–26 at CSU Long Beach.

Amazon, Applied Materials, BAE Systems, CH2MHill, Cisco, Conexant, FritoLay, Intel, Intuit, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, QUALCOMM, Raytheon and Unisys joined forces to help sponsor the two-day event with MESA.  

The workshop, organized under the theme “Cultivating Leaders for Tomorrow—Today,” was geared to strengthen the relationships among industry, student organization officers and MESA/campus diversity directors to support student leaders in engineering organizations.  

Attendees were chapter officers from organizations including the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists and the Society of Women Engineers. The students represented chapters from CSU Long Beach, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, San Diego State University, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC San Diego and the University of Southern California.

Industry representatives provided workshops on navigating corporate culture, developing a marketing plan, proposal writing, strategic communications and identifying attributes to success in academics and corporate leadership. Students also had a chance to network and coordinate activities with chapter officers from different engineering organizations operating on the same campus.

The corporate representatives provided intensive sessions to show students how to maximize social networking opportunities to leverage personal effectiveness. All students left the workshop with specific strategies and goals, calendars, timelines, and action plans.

“This event is very important to us all,” said Margaret Paulin, manager of Sector University Relations and Recruiting at Northrop Grumman. “Our companies come together to hold this event because we have a mutual interest in supporting these diversity initiatives. We want to ensure the success of these student leaders on their campuses.”

The workshop was first offered in 2002 after five company representatives who were involved in MESA Engineering Program advisory boards in Southern California banded together to provide the leadership skills support requested by directors.

The workshop, run on an ad-hoc basis, has been held annually for five years. This year marks the first time that MESA has been formally involved. “ MESA was able to provide us with additional logistics and coordination resources so companies could focus on workshop content and other priorities, such as bringing on other sponsors,” said Paulin.

The conference was an important way for MESA to reaffirm its work at four-year institutions after a major budget cut, said MESA Executive Director Oscar Porter. “When our budget was reduced by 50 percent five years ago, we were forced to eliminate operational funding support for the MEP so our statewide office lost its formal relationship with many of the MEP centers.

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