On March 11th, our Section in collaboration with the UNM Student Chapter and GOLD hosted Carl Selinger’s talk “Stuff you don’t learn in Engineering school” at UNM’s Centennial Center’s auditorium.

As many of you know, Carl wrote a column by the same name on Spectrum many years ago and it became so successful that he wrote the book and travels around the country given talks and seminars on this topic.

Carl gave a 1 hour talk covering the main aspects of his take on the soft skills that any engineer, not only EEs, should acquire and nurture in order to be more successful and stand out from the crowd. The talk was very well received and afterwards several students and young engineers approached Carl with questions.

Interestingly, a group of high school students attended the talk, probably first attracted to the auditorium by the smell of pizza and cookies offered as part of the event. They also talked to Carl after the talk and invited him to see them practice for an upcoming robotics competition. The Centennial Center graciously offers space to these students to practice. The students are members of the FTC Team 5666 that participates in the US FIRST competition.

Thank you very much to our Chair, Aaron, the UNM Student Chapter chair, Raymundo, and GOLD’s chair, Cesar, for all the hard work in putting this event together. We think we can have Carl over next year for another talk or maybe a seminar so check with us periodically.

The pictures below show Carl at the beginning of the talk, Carl talking to students, Carl proudly showing Lobo and Student Chapter t-shirts, and Carl with the high school students in one of their practice runs.

Until next time,

Gilberto (Vice Chair)