 So I'll go through and introduce each of our panelists briefly, and then we'll jump right in. So to my left is Ed Berger. Ed Berger is an associate professor, recently promoted to full. Hey, hey. In education and mechanical engineering at Purdue. He was in 1996, and his MS in mechanical engineering a little before that. Prior to joining us in 2014, he served as associate dean for undergraduate programs in the School of Engineering of the University of Virginia, where he was also a faculty member in mechanical engineering. Prior to joining UVA, he was on the faculty in mechanical at the University of Cincinnati. His engineering education research agenda includes two key issues. First, as an instructor, the use of social media for effective teaching. And second, as an administrator, the emerging institutional research area of predictive models for student academic success. His mechanical engineering research interests include nonlinear mechanics of joints and interfaces. To Ed's left is Sherry Shepard. There we go. It's over here. Sherry Shepard is the Richard Whelan Professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate design classes and conducts research on fracture mechanics and applied finite element analysis. And she does research on how people become engineers. From 1999 to 2008, she served as a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching, where she led the foundation's engineering study. In addition to publishing technical papers, reports and textbooks, she has led or co-led several large multi-institutional projects to build new educational research programs and related resources, such as the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation, which some of you may know as the EPIS Center, and a program on summer research experiences for high school teachers. Her industry experience includes engineering positions at all of Detroit's Big Three, Ford, GM, and Chrysler. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors and awards, including the Walter Gores Award, which is Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching, and the Chester Carlson Award and Ralph Coats Rowe Awards from the American Society for Engineering Education, recognizing her distinguished accomplishments in engineering education and her outstanding teachable and notable contributions to the mechanical engineering profession. So to Sherry's left is Joyce Main, assistant professor of engineering education, recently given tenure and promoted to associate, and her research examines the impact of educational programs and policies on students' academic and employment pathways with a focus on participation of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering. In 2017, Dr. Main was awarded an NSF career grant to model longitudinal career pathways of engineering doctorates. She's also the PI of an NSF research study examining academic and employment returns to student engagement in cooperative education programs. Dr. Main is the recipient of the 2014 ASEE Educational Research Methods Apprentice Faculty Award, the 2015 Frontiers in Education Faculty Fellow Award, and the 2018 Violet Haas Memorial Fellowship, and very recently, the 2019 Betty Vedder Award for Research from WePAN. And to Joyce's left is Tim Lazator. Tim serves as Purdue's executive director for career success and director of the Center for Career Opportunities. Following a brief tenure working in the private sector, Tim began his career in university career services in 1981 at WVU. His career services work included career counseling and administrative positions at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Indiana University, no hissing. Prior to his Purdue appointment in 2000, Tim served as the career center director at Stony Brook University on Long Island, having authored chapters and five books on career and job search related topics. Tim was awarded a Fulbright in 2005 to study higher education and society in Germany and Poland. Today, Tim leads Purdue's career readiness assessment team and initiative of the University Innovation Alliance. So welcome all of our panelists. This is a lot of expertise here on the career pathways of engineers. So I'm going to ask each panelist first to just provide a couple of sentences on what each one does to understand or improve the transition between engineering undergrad education and early career. So let's just go. Well, the focus of our attention in, we have a research grant called the Red Grant Revolutionizing Engineering Departments. Our focus has been on the kinds of non-technical preparation that students receive while they're here and how that aligns or doesn't align with what is useful for them in their first position after they graduate, where these skills could include anything from communication to teamwork, any of the other what people call professional skills. And we're trying to understand a little bit more about the degree to which students feel they possess these skills and the degree to which they have access to opportunities to build those skills while they're here and how we can just generally bolster their readiness while they're here and give them those experiences through either curricular means or co-curricular slash extracurricular means as well. So we study that and we try to sort of figure out how we can advance our mission in that regard. I think two things I'll mention where we're puzzling through this question of students transitioning to early career professional. One has been a partnership which actually has been with Purdue and Rose Holman, San Jose State, Stanford, and Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth to really look at what is the relationship between career development centers and local advising that students get within departments or student services office and the various points of view on that, on who is there to support students and how well does that work and ultimately we want that work to translate into materials and strategies for the various stakeholders who really are there to support questions around career development. The other thing we do is we talk to a lot of early career engineers in terms of understanding the skills that are critical not only to they're getting their work done and enjoying their work but also for them to be thinking long term about their career and really that's a great source of thinking about how does that translate back into again conversations that could or should be happening when students are still students. Good morning. Overall my research group looks at student pathways into engineering and into the workforce so we look at their pathways from high school to college and into the workforce. So specific to their early career transitions we're looking at how participation in cooperative education programs and co-ops and how that influences students' likelihood of attaining engineering work and their early career salary and what it means for their longer term career pathways and salary outlook. Someone asked a question before I give you my two sentences. Most of your students, how many have found your way to the CCO in Young Hall? Okay, many of you. Not quite half though. Anyway, the Center for Career Opportunities is the campus' comprehensive career center. So we serve all majors at all degree levels and everything from career development, career coaching, helping students build job search tools to actually being a hub for employer engagement and it may be a surprise to some of you but last year we counted 1711 unique employers that were physically on campus recruiting students. So we have a very large employer engagement piece to that. Alright, thanks. So I'm going to go through sort of three questions for the panel and then we'll turn it over for your questions. And what I'm really asking them to do is that they're each sitting on a large kind of body of knowledge, a wealth of information about this. So I'm going to ask a question in three parts basically, which is what is the one thing that you want to tell undergraduates about the transition from undergrad to career that would improve the transition for them? And then I'm going to ask what's the one thing you want employers to know and what's the one thing you want engineering educators to know to assist with the transition. So I think we're just going to keep going down the row and have each question answered in turn. What would you tell students about the one thing you think is most important for them to understand about the transition? I think that when students are in the midst of the curriculum, which especially in engineering is so rigorous, they spend a lot of time in deep technical details, they don't always appreciate that there are other marketable skills that deserve more priority than many times they get. And so I would like to engage students in a discussion about the potential trade-offs of taking this course versus that course, so one that provides depth versus one that provides breadth. So this idea of a T-shaped engineer that people talk about sometimes. So that's the one thing I would want to engage in more conversations with students about because there's a lot of value to the top of the T, even though there's a lot of value to the depth as well. I think the first thing would be reassuring them that it is a transition and in fact life is a sole series of transitions. And I don't know if that's calming, you know, that they hope that you make a choice and then you're set. But in fact, you're always going to be confronted with the possibility of new roles and stepping into things where you're uncertain and so kind of say, get used to that. I think another thing though, I'll say two things. One is start the thinking about where you want to be and how you want to be well before, you know, your last semester because these are really deep and hard questions around what is your world meaning? What is your work meaning? How do those reflect where you want to be situated in the next steps? What are your values? And these are really hard questions and they're easy to put aside because of the problem sets and all those other things. So think about the discipline of being in a community through a career development center with friends to have yourself actually reflect on those very hard questions. In terms of the one thing that I would like undergraduates to think about as they transition into their careers, I think that mentorship, community and social networks are super important and reaching out to other recent graduates who have just gone through the process is really important. Seeking out mentors who've been in the workforce for a little longer to get their perspective would be really helpful for that process. So really reaching out to their communities for support. And I want to play off that a little bit because a lot of students are genuinely surprised with how many resources there are on this campus. So we really encourage you to take the time to make very well informed decisions. As I mentioned earlier, you're on a campus that's aggressively recruited by many kinds of employers. It is easy to just kind of pay attention to the brands and talk to the people who are being particularly savvy and good at talking with you. But there are great resources. One, for instance, is the Career Research Portal, which is on the library server, but the CCO and a few other departments pay into that to subscribe to these amazing, robust databases. We also provide a lot of special programming to bring organizations in that don't have those brand names like the Emerging Employer Career Fair for startups and second-stage companies. So it's really to be thoughtful and look beyond the glitz in the branding strategies of the high-profile companies to really look and understand what's out there and what the possibilities are. All right, thanks. So what do you want employers to know? What could they do to better support early career engineers as they enter their companies? You got it? Yeah, I'm just going to keep doing this. I've been thinking for a long time at all of the universities that I've been employed with that there's such an opportunity to work with employers to figure out how well calibrated are our graduates to their needs and what are the specific things that we can improve. And so from an employer standpoint, I want them to understand that there are willing partners on our side to sort of figure out what does the curricular and co-curricular experience need to look like to add value to everybody's experience, not just on the employer side, but obviously the student learning new skills and so forth as well. And so I think that there's not enough of those conversations that happen kind of routinely and there's not enough action that comes out of those conversations now, but there are people who are willing on this side to do some work to make some of those things improved. I think one thing would be related to continuing to reflect and revise what your onboarding strategies are. Being aware that when somebody comes into a new environment, there are so many acronyms, for instance, as the very trivial thing, but they can stumble people up. And so what is that process of enculturating and getting someone to really feel like they're a vital member of a team? And so reviewing that and is it working? And is it working for all of your new employees? The second thing, and this was part of a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago at a conference on women leadership in tech companies, and it was talking about rethink what your strategies are in partnering with universities. I mean, I think there are the very valuable traditional recruiting ones, but what can your relationship be with a program in terms of guest speakers and field trips and maybe even co-research? I have a grant with Ford right now that's critically looking at what is the internship experience of product development interns and does it really affect their view of the auto industry in general and their view of themselves, the students, their view of themselves as engineers. So think more creatively about what is this university, industry, firm kind of partnership and how can it be actually more productive? Yes, so I would agree with everything that's been said before. I think it's really important to kind of think about the onboarding process as well as the recruitment process, right? So for employers who are interested in diversifying their particular workforce, having an authentic relationship with colleges and universities and really thinking about, you know, these different types of partnerships and how to get students engaged is really important. Amen to everything said. I'll speak a little bit more to the recruiting side because that's what I do. Two things in particular. I already mentioned the numbers to you. Very competitive for employers to meet their talent acquisition needs. There's a lot of competition for them. So we will talk to companies a lot to look at freshmen, talk to them, see potential. One of the worst things I see at the industrial round table were one of the career fairs when companies literally wave off freshmen. They don't want to talk to them yet. Come back in a couple of years, that's a big mistake. And really not only speaking with freshmen, but engaging them, helping them be part of that career development, student development process. The other piece is we have some exceptionally wonderful and talented international students. And there are too many companies who can sponsor, who can have these international students come on board through CPT or OPT as interns that don't. And we really confront them on that because there is so much that they bring from a cultural standpoint, from an academic standpoint to the workplace. So really freshmen and international students is really what we have some of those tough conversations with employers. Okay, so before we go on to the question about engineering educators, I'm going to change things up and ask a follow-up, which is what are the points of disconnection for students entering the workforce? How are their expectations not met? And I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way, but what surprises them about what they think their first job is going to be like and what their experience typically is. And this one I may ask for volunteers since I don't want to put each of you on the spot, but anybody that wants to go ahead and share. So one of the things I've heard from students and employers is while it's great in the academy that we're putting students on teams and really letting them focus for a semester or a quarter for a long period of time on a project, taking it from a need all the way through. Students may come in now to the workforce expecting that's what teams are and that people will be co-located and you'll have lots of time together and you'll eat lunch together. And the reality of most organizations are being on a team maybe you never actually meet your team members and you're on the project for two weeks because you have a particular expertise that they need to draw in. So kind of a mismatch on what a team means. So I think that the early career engineer needs to figure out how to be on now what a team is in whatever organization there is to be productive. I think another thing that working through is you may be the only 20-something in the group, in the work group. And so figuring out socially what does it mean to connect with a wider range of people in terms of age and connect as peers because the university kind of has a hierarchy of professors and all of that but now you're on a group where you are on a level line and so what does that mean socially? So I think that's two of the things. Tim? And I would certainly speak that culture because going from a campus culture to a work culture can be very different. Some of you experiences in your first internship or your first co-op assignment. Others of you may not experience it until you graduate from college and go into that. There are certain things you're used to on campus, grades for instance, that you're essentially going to put a lot of effort into a very specific amount of time, maybe 16 weeks. I know some students will calculate how much effort they put into certain classes to get to a certain GPA threshold and maybe they don't work quite as hard as some as other. That's different in a work setting. You really oftentimes don't have that option. You need to really put forth great effort across the board. Hours, a lot of students, especially as you become upperclassman, you have a little more control. If you don't want to take those early morning classes, you can adjust your calendars accordingly. Sometimes you don't have that kind of flexibility within a work setting. You may have early morning meetings. You're not used to being involved at hours. You're not used to being involved. Social life can be a big thing. I'm sure nobody here has put on a costume and was 4 a.m. down in the among the bars for breakfast club. You probably can't pull that off very regularly when you're in a work setting. Getting plenty of rest, exercise, really being at your best is very important. Even simple things like attire. There is many work settings that you'll be in where it is pretty casual. You don't see a lot of coats and ties anymore, depending on the industry and the work setting. Nor are you seeing people come in and cut off jeans and these content flavored t-shirts. There's adjustments at a lot of different levels. I think adjusting to that culture from the campus to the world of work can be a surprise. We've also talked about a lot of students who have had internships and co-op assignments. On the one hand, they often report back a sense of pride that they have been well prepared to do certain elements of their job. The Purdue engineers in particular are not afraid of hard work and they take that to their job. They're also technically very well prepared so they have a skill set that allows them to contribute to whatever the mission is. However, they also have nowhere to hide and they have to perhaps for the first time confront things that they maybe aren't so good at. That is some of the things that you all are mentioning, which is adjusting to a new culture in the organization or doing some sort of remote teaming or whatever it might be. I think that part of the transition whether it's to a co-op job or to a permanent position is just managing and knowing that it's not all going to be entirely smooth and you're going to learn things about yourself and it's just been a set of interesting discussions with people who come back from a co-op assignment and can reflect on that and it helps them sort of think through what are the things I need to do to improve so that next time it goes a little bit more smoothly. Joyce, do you have anything to add? Yes, so there are a lot of students who do experience a mismatch between their own expectations about what work is going to be like and what the reality is once they do start working but since my research group primarily talks with students who've had co-op experiences and internship experiences, these kind of early work experience actually helps mitigate a lot of some of that you know, discord, right? So, you know, it's a good way to try to kind of, you know, match up the reality between expectations so to get more consistency. Thanks. Alright, so now, and I think this is a nice segue because we've been talking about sort of how do engineering students as they go to co-op how do they extract lessons from that what do they learn about themselves so what are the things that engineering educators ought to know about better preparing students for that transition? What are the things that can help engineers adapt to their early career pathways? This is a tough question because I think in the abstract you can talk to engineering educators and they will say yes, we should do a better job of this or this or this but then where the rubber meets the road it's not often their job to do that thing, right? So there's always a question of well sure we should do this better but who's going to do that? I teach, you know, thermodynamics or I teach transport or whatever I teach it's not my job to teach teaming or it's not my job to teach professional skills or communication or whatever it is so I think there is some broad agreement that there are things that we can do better and it's really difficult to have those conversations to figure out how to enact what we think we ought to do and it's just a challenge across the university not just in this dimension but there's a whole bunch of other conversations we could or should be having that are also challenged by that state of affairs but there is a way that we can do this, right? There are enough people I think that believe in moving in certain directions that it's possible but it's really hard and that's the challenge we always face. Sure. You know, asking what engineering educators can do to work in this space is interesting for the reasons Ed talked about and for a second reason many faculty have actually not worked in industry and so we're talking about a world we're certainly engaged in a real world the academy is a real world and an organization and all the issues that are in a manufacturing firm are replicated here but we haven't necessarily looked and been in an environment where a product is being produced in terms of hardware and so we can provide some of that but I think again the relationships with industry as coaches we have been experimenting at Stanford for the last 5 maybe 10 years and actually having a course for academic credit called Designing Your Life and there's a book by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett that really gives students time in the course to struggle with these questions I offer a version of it for PhD students believe it or not PhD students a year or two years before they finish are stumped by these questions too about what I want to do with my life and Dave and Bill really have the academic chops to really be working in that space of questioning what do you want out of life so I think making sure there is space in a student's life to ponder and struggle with these incredibly important questions in terms of what I would say to faculty and instructors be aware of the resources available on campus like CCO so if students ask you about working in industry you can recommend the places that they could go to get more information second a lot of faculty already have a lot of opportunities in their own classes for students to develop professional skills so that's already embedded in a lot of the curriculum so perhaps better signposting that they're there just calling them out and saying these skills are going to be important later for when you get into the workforce I think kind of flagging it for students will help them think about how they can translate that to later you know the term mentorship can be a scary term to faculty it really is about how it's defined I know a lot of people when they think of mentors they think okay I need to commit like 8 to 10 hours a week to each student obviously time will pass by quickly it's more than that definition in our conversations with students a simple thing that some students want is just to engage a faculty to learn about their contacts who is it that they can connect to maybe as a perspective internship provider or as a perspective hire when they graduate who can they connect with as it relates to a particular research so mentoring there can be value to the student in a number of ways beyond a big time commitment for faculty with each of their students which really just isn't realistic so being willing to be available really be open and engaged to have those kinds of conversations with students that help them go a long way and we learned out a number of years ago with the Gallup Purdue survey in how alums even 30 years out really valued having that kind of connection with faculty can I say one more thing so I know we're talking undergraduate to work force but I think those also those conversations with faculty can plant seeds about graduate education and the conversation around what are you thinking about your future is it seems like you really like these kind of classes might you think about studying those more in the future and there are some students maybe because of their background who never thought about graduate school as an option either immediately after they graduate but longer term as they really see what their needs may be to actually get where they want in their career so that's another thing of reminding students they have a range of options in their longer career right thanks so it's your time folks so this is the risky thing to do on a Friday morning to say oh yeah the audience is going to ask questions so I'm trusting you all and please use the mic so there are mics traveling and we are recording so we want to make sure first that people can hear you but also that we're recording your question I'll repeat questions is also very good in engineering and science and that your students don't have to declare major until after their second year I think do you find or do you feel that that makes a difference in your graduates compared to graduates from other schools that do not have maybe such richness in terms of gravity? I do think it does you know and there's no quality judgment I mean I think it's a difference our students may graduate in mechanical engineering and never having taken a controls class I suspect that M.E. is here take at least one controls class five or six so there is going to be more technical chops in that particular thing 50% of our undergraduates in M.E. go abroad for a whole quarter and they're studying in Moscow or Kyoto or Madrid or Berlin or Santiago so that's a different component of education in terms of being in the world and again no value judgments but it will represent a different set of views and I think that I think employers are very aware of that and that they need a range of engineers with these different points of view to actually have a vital vibrant organization can I say too? I used to work at a liberal arts institution with an engineering school and now I work at an engineering institution with some other things and we're a comprehensive land grant university am I wrong? Am I wrong? Amen but my point is that when I talk to students the kinds of jobs that they get are different and the kinds of jobs for which people come to recruit are somewhat different too and I think it reflects the identity institution and again it's not a value judgment it's just an access to opportunity is slightly different so I think it makes a difference I'm not sure it's not good or bad it's just sort of an observation that is it's two different models of ways that things happen and I would will also add about 50% of our ME majors stay on for a master's degree and they do that they call it a co-term degree where you get your masters and your bachelors both at the end of five years and in part because they're still hungry for more technical they feel like they need some more well roundedness in particular areas of ME so there's also this cost if you will to a student who wants to go more in depth feeling like they need that additional fifth year. Thank you each for your time we appreciate that you are here and giving us the information that you are. As a first year engineering professor and my research is really basically on that early side K-12 area I have really hard to help our students understand the diversity issues around women in the workforce and it's very important to have multiple perspectives, value the international experiences of your young colleagues with you and I think what I see is in the academy here our students are getting a diverse and sometimes mixed message about what that's supposed to be and I heard a story from a young woman who has come through our program she's graduating she went to interview at a company she told me this yesterday that she turned out an offer because it was a very hierarchical structure and the person who was interviewing her said be prepared you're going to have to get dirty this is not a nice clean job it was very it sounded somewhat sexist in the way that she declined the job so I feel like there's a mismatch and I don't think that's true of all companies of course but I think it's still a problem so what are your thoughts on this issue and how do we continue to make it better and how do we help all levels and not just the early ones start to think about this and address that sort of problem if I can comment quickly this is also fresh each semester I go into a computer science class and it's part of multi-generations in the workplace and it's a really neat class because each person represents a different generation on the baby boomer obviously and we really describe workplaces that are really heavy within those generations and it's very interesting to engage a students in that Q&A we actually ask them which they prefer and it's been fun over the years between the millennials and I guess now the Gen Z's in their view of these things but to make a long story short I think in some ways that you can integrate that into the classroom really begin to prepare and address some of the sensitivity that those areas will be helpful in your right there are some industries that are exactly as the company that you describe and there are others that are frankly far more progressive so that goes back to the student research about what's a good fit for them I teach a course called expanding engineering limits culture diversity and equity and there's usually about 80 students in it who come to the class for multiple reasons it counts as one of the general education things on engaging diversity but many of them also it felt slights or not belonging at certain points during their education and even white males you know not a fit and so we talk about the social science and reread the social science and then we talk about the realities of the workplace and that workplaces are also struggling with questions of equity and a distribution of types of people and unbiased assessment of performance and sometimes the students get discouraged because isn't there a perfect company already that I can step into and it just is all fair and the reality is there isn't and they have to be part of actually making the change in the long run so how can we equip them with strategies and skills and wisdom to make some good choices but also say they may have to be activists and figure out what that means in certain organizations we also talk about them learning to read organizations you know reading what an organization says on their website about diversity and then doing information interviewing to talk to people about what is the reality of working in a particular situation so in some ways the academy is more advanced in talking about these issues but in some ways we aren't and I think students really need to be aware that they're not going to find the perfect fit but you know where can they find one that they figure out they can flourish and actually have impact in the corner oh it's Kerry I'll stand up so you can see me my question is for Sherry since you're from outside the university so here there seems to be a lot of emphasis on sort of speeding up the undergrad degree to get students to be working faster the idea being that the faster they can finish their degree they can save money and so I'm kind of curious because what you're talking about is saying 50% of MEs are getting a masters that's definitely not speeding things up I mean it's taking longer and so I know some of us have our own feelings about this and as we think about for engineering but from an outside perspective just kind of curious if you could kind of talk about that balance and there's the tension the engineer of 2020 report new skills that are needed too so we want to actually stuff more into that degree I would say you know many of our students actually come in with a full year of AP units so I also have to say that in terms of their math and science so they're able to actually start engineering earlier so they actually may do both degrees in four years so sometimes it's not extending it out to a fifth year so that's a little bit of a footnote you know I think there's the hurry up but I think we also have to recognize those years of traditional students and there are non-traditional students in their 30s but that age from 18 to 22 and adolescence actually goes into your mid to late 20s you know it's not just a teenage thing so is it really great to rush it to get into the workforce or actually savor that time to muck around be uncertain to figure out who you are so I've got conflicted feelings I know Germany has really struggled on this employment thing for a couple of reasons their high school used to go up through 13 so students were that older they had mandatory service and that was either in the military or working on a service organization and then their first degree was a five year degree it was the diploma they've gone now to more of our system in terms of their bachelors is three years there's no mandatory service anymore and their high school is 12 years now and so employers are really struggling that these individuals are now coming in like three to four years younger and really developmentally are at a different place so I'm not sure we just want to rush it question in the front so my question comes from a place of I've worked in very small companies in different areas and sometimes like you said you're the only 20 person there what would you suggest on how to meet new people in a new city or how to really have that work life balance when you don't have anyone that looks like you so suggestions for I was just having this conversation with an advisee before I came out here for her her faith is a really important part of who she is and so she's really recognizing finding a church or a synagogue to actually be part of that she's also an athlete so figuring out where's the gym that she can be joining and you know I've had other students who also recognize I'm remembering actually it was a young woman and I won't name the company but everyone there was much older and they were really into American football and she really did she knew nothing about American football she actually decided she needed to learn something about American football so that she could open up the conversation and actually she found that opened the conversation on a whole set of things once she kind of knew the lingo and the acronyms and all that a little bit with football so sometimes you need to be actually make connections and realize that age doesn't have to be a barrier in terms of talking about life and all of its trauma and drama social networking you have a LinkedIn account so there exist I don't know if you were already in the group but there is a Purdue Engineering Alumni Association group and we partnered with them so they grew at first with about 6,000 to 7,000 alumni and then we occasionally invite students to join a lot of these alumni are a little older they want to mentor, they want to help make connections so that is a great way to join and just do a little bit of a deep dive where you can find those with an affinity some might be from your hometown some may be living where you plan to live and invite conversation that way so when you connect to one that's good the other thing is check the Purdue Alumni Association see if there is an alumni chapter close by because that's also a great way to make connections and there are 20 something groups around, I'm on Meetup I just moved here 2 years ago so I'm doing the same thing looking for community and I've noticed a lot of things were 20 somethings that I wouldn't go to, right so you see those on Facebook and Meetup is a little weird here because there are not quite enough people so depending on how populated the place is you can use different tools somewhere in the back there we go here and then over there hello so a lot of what's been talked about today is this disconnect in the transition and maybe what undergraduate students and in some cases graduate students lack as they go to a workplace setting from more of a pros model what are some things that Millennials and Gen what is after Millennials? Gen Z okay, what are things that Millennials and Gen Z can are assets and they can bring to companies and how can we also help them realize that this is an asset that they bring because they're living in the world and they don't see it necessarily as an asset they just see how it is but what are those strengths that we as educators can help them realize that they bring to companies? we talk to students all the time through our research and basically what I said before is that they're definitely not afraid of hard work they're passionate about engineering and acquiring skills and acquiring new experiences that test them in terms of their ability to function as an engineer they sort of have that youthful energy that goes with it sometimes and so I think that's all really positive it's even more positive if they come with a certain amount of curiosity or that kind of openness new experience I don't know if that's exactly characteristic of the whole generation but if that is part of the package that's really positive too and so I think those are really those are things that they bring in our case they bring with them here and we help them sharpen them up and really deploy those skills in a pretty positive way I would to that add a comfort with technology and social media and you may be going into an organization that's adopting those things and your comfort could be a real asset to a group you know I think at the same time you need to maybe recognize playing a role of almost a teacher because you know there may be others in the way or another way and it's more comfortable and so how do you play a role in helping others learn to be comfortable with something new and I think playing on that the one thing we know from trending data with millennials and Gen Z is this real passion for wanting to contribute to society for community service for making a difference in the world and I've been fascinated over my years in career services and many of the companies sell themselves to prospective hires and many of the companies are going to talk about that they are making some kind of contribution they may partner with certain charities or certain service organizations so that is something that as a generation is a really great way to connect and I'm going to flag for folks that Professor Pilot our professor of practice and engineering education has published a book called Millennial Reset and it's all about that question of what millennials bring and how to help industry folks learn what those assets are and how to welcome millennials and make the most of what they bring to value add in different settings and I read the book and it's fantastic I'd like to ask you about the current family foundations investment in changing engineering education to include the entrepreneurial mindset they've chosen to invest over 30 million dollars in engineering educators but they've chosen schools that value teaching over research for the most part like Mt. Union, Ohio Northern Valparaiso, Rose-Hulman what are the implications of that what you've been talking about or in Ed's case, changing faculty because they've chosen to invest where they think they can change courses and faculty and by the way it's not here although I had someone from a keen campus basically tell me that I had to do it I had to make Purdue a keen campus so I don't know if that's changed are you involved with them Sherry? I don't know that anybody here has a lot of expertise but I will say I think they're broadening their campuses for this so they did start and in fact I was on a small teaching campus that couldn't get into keen because we proposed a social entrepreneurship project when they at that time they weren't doing that now they are so there's an interesting kind of shift in how they're building their change movement so some of our faculty do have some research partnerships in this space with them so even though we're not officially a campus we are working with them and bringing some of the things that are being learned to our campus as well so there are partnerships I think to your point it's a very it's a much longer conversation than we have time for here about the the way that individual people prioritize how they spend their time and what they choose to invest in and in this case I'm talking about faculty because a lot of these changes just can't happen without faculty direct very sort of close and diligent and in some cases very long term involvement and you're right not every campus has a culture in which that can happen very easily so I mean I don't know what the answer is but there's a very long set of what would you say sort of incentives and rewards and constraints that make that possible in certain places and not as possible in other places so I agree that it's a big perennial problem challenge to sort of figure out what we can do within our environment alright we have seven more minutes more questions here's one in the front thank you all for being here today some of you have actually brought up some of these relevant points about the t-shaped curriculum Kerry asked about the more and for I want to ask I feel like there's this this panel today is about lining up students and moving into workforce but education should be more than just preparing students for workforce what would you tell legislators who are so we're at a public university there's a decrease in public funding for public education including in higher education what would you tell legislators about the broader need for a broader education than just preparing engineering students for workforce give you a minute to think about it it looks like Joyce might have something so with Audine Fenton and Carl Smith as well as Karen Watson we're thinking about proposing reinvigoration of the Morrill Act to try to bring in more funds to public research universities to focus on engineering the mechanical arts as well as liberal arts so all together so and that's an important thing people don't realize about the Morrill Act the phrase you know agriculture and mechanical arts gets quoted a lot but the rest of that sentence has liberal arts in it so it was always meant to be comprehensive education for everybody that was the vision and I think this is a message not only to legislators but the public in general our education is too expensive in the United States the debt that students take on for this thing that they hope will make their life better or give them more opportunities is just unreasonable I mean when you look at other systems in Germany there was student uprisings when they actually were going to charge like 300 euros a semester for their education and so the public commitment to saying this is a public good as opposed to a personal thing needs to be part of the shift back so you were talking about how freshmen and international students are the ones who struggle the most to obtain the company's attention because of their lack of experience I may say so me as an international student and as a freshman student how could we approach like better approach these companies in order for them to notice us since we just want to learn about the company so we can decide what to do with our future okay very good question I think one piece of advice that I will give quickly to freshmen because sometimes they'll go to places like the industrial roundtable and they encounter one or two companies who are just not open to having a conversation they give up too easily in reality a lot of companies want to have those conversations in addition to the career fair formats they're here for information sessions in some cases they may be in the classrooms they may be here even in more informal ways so I think having the confidence to persevere and get in front of the companies and approach them in a way as I know I'm a freshman and your internships might be geared for someone more experienced but I really am interested in your company as a matter of fact and that's where you go to the career research portal to learn what you can about these organizations so essentially you get them interested in knowing that you're a perspective higher at some point in the future and if you go to that poor don't you look at some of those databases and you learn more about the company it will just give you confidence that you can have the kind of conversation that's going to make you much more attractive to them as a candidate and a lot of the same recruiters come year after year so you could meet somebody in your first year and then see them again when you're a sophomore and again when you're a junior and you're building a relationship and so to think about the long game as well even if they're not hiring first years they might you know you can come back and something to know as an international student companies might have this across the board we don't talk to international students but I can tell you for a fact developing those kinds of relationships they may not want to advertise it because they're afraid that there'll be a cast of thousands that want to talk to them but establish those relationships and you may be surprised that they'll figure out a way to try to work you in and provide you with that internship experience so don't take we don't hire internship always as a kind of a black and white carton cement issue I'm connecting Alice's point to this point is that it seems like it's very easy to play the short game in a lot of respects so legislatures might have a relatively near term view or students or employers might have a near term view but I think this idea of playing the long game because I mean for better or worse you're not going to be able to retire for like 50 years right so so it is a very long game and that's really important advice that's really just the connection there was sort of interesting alright we have one minute so any final thoughts from the panel have a really good summer I'm envious the the cco does not shut down for the summer so for students who are here that want to come utilize our services we have drop in hours in the afternoon during the fall and early spring or drop in hours are 10 to 4 Monday through Friday so take advantage of the resources plus there's a lot fewer students in our offices in the summer you get a lot of attention alright will you join me in thanking our panel