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Students taking Professor Leigh McCue’s “Developing the Societal Engineer” class are given a break from the technical rigor of their studies. Instead of heat transfer and equations, they are treated to a semester-long course that blends case studies with seminar-style speakers to improve career and professional readiness through discussions, panels, and lectures, with a focus on ethical issues, communication, and current events in the profession. The class is a Mason Impact course, a designation given to those that “include a focus on civic engagement or community-based learning.”
Prior to a recent class, senior Elijah Pointer said, “This has been very, very helpful in contextualizing a lot of what we’re doing as engineers. Knowing certain concepts is helpful, but knowing how to apply them in the real world is the gap-closer.”
McCue dives deep into her professional network to bring in speakers from a variety of sectors and backgrounds. A recent chance encounter she had with College of Engineering and Computing advisory board chair Lisa Donnan resulted in Donnan agreeing to speak to the class from the venture capital (VC) perspective about how to launch a startup.
Donnan, with over 20 years of VC experience, told students, “Know what you do well, and surround yourself with people who do the rest.” She also encouraged students that if they are thinking of launching their own business, a good time to do it is when they are young and when failure has minimal negative consequences. She told them, “Sometimes it might take you four startup attempts before you find success. And in Silicon Valley, they wear those failures like a badge of honor.”
Before the class, Donnan was available to students for a networking gathering. An opportunity to meet professionals is something that senior Saad Talbi appreciates. “We’ve had a couple recruiters reach out from this class specifically—big companies like General Dynamics, MITRE, and M.C Dean.” In addition to learning about entrepreneurship, Talbi said one of his big takeaways is understanding the steps to take after graduation to be successful.
“My understanding is founding mechanical engineering (ME) department chair Oscar Barton was inspired to incorporate a course like this into the ME program after seeing Boston University’s ‘Creating the Societal Engineer’ approach, with Professor Bob Gallo teaching the class for years prior to his transition to an adjunct role,” said McCue. “It’s been an honor to inherit this course and be able to keep their great initiative rolling.”
Pointer appreciated picking up skills to make him marketable. “This might sound very general, but learning about communicating well is important. As engineers we have technical courses, and being able to integrate that information with business speaking will make you a very high value employee.”
Topics covered in the class vary. Among them are “Ethics in a cybersecure, AI world,” when the class will hear from Thomas Gardner, Chief Technology Officer for HP Federal; financial planning, with Stewart Emenheiser, managing director at Davenport & Company; and association awareness, with representatives from numerous professional societies.