ESS 514: Center for Access to Engineering Excellence

Laura Vogt:
So hello and welcome to The (not so) Secret Guide to being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host Laura Vogt. I’m the associate director for marketing and communications for the college of engineering. School is in session and we’ve got a lot of ways for you to be supported in your classes, to connect with your peers, attend workshops, and so much more all through the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. So welcome with me today, the student development manager, Luis Castillo, and two of our student workers, Alexandro Garcia, and Mohamed Mohamed. Luis, let’s start by getting to know you, can tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at UC Berkeley?

Luis Castillo:
Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me here today and thank you to Alexandro and Mohammed for joining us as well. So to start off, my role is student development manager for engineering student services. What that entails is that I oversee, I’m the main contact for the college of engineering for engineering student organizations. I work closely with the engineering student council, just as well. I manage the programming for workshops and professional and leadership events that we have through ESS. Finally, I manage the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence, which provides tutoring and various other resources to students.

Laura Vogt:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. So Alexandro, you’re next. Tell us about yourself, your majors and your activities here at UC Berkeley?

Alexandro Garcia:
Well, Thank you for having me again. Thank you, Louise, for inviting me and Laura as well. So my name is Alexandro Garcia. I’m a fourth year civil and environmental engineering student focusing primarily on sustainability. I am active in a lot of different organizations around campus, specifically American society of civil engineers, [foreign language 00:01:36], I’m a student assistant at the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence or the CAEE as we call it. And that’s basically what I do here on campus.

Laura Vogt:
Last but not least Mohamed you’re up. Please tell us about yourself and your majors and your activities at UC Berkeley

Mohamed Mohamed:
Thank you both for having me. My name is Mohammad, I’m a fourth year mechanical engineering major here at Berkeley. I’m a part of BESSA, which is the black engineering sciences student association. I’m their internal vice president. And I’m also part of PIE, which is pioneers in engineering. And I’m also a student assistant here at the CAEE. Thank you.

Laura Vogt:
So again, thank you everyone for being here today. So let’s start with some of the real basics, because we really want to talk about the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. So Luis, can you tell us more about it and what it does?

Luis Castillo:
Yeah, definitely. So the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence works primarily to provide tutoring for engineering students and also for any student around the college that’s interested in receiving any of the tutoring that we offer for lower division courses. Similar for upper division courses and any other miscellaneous courses that someone for theaters can provide. And the past we have worked with other offices around campus to both provide services to students who are international with the MasterCard program. And we have also made different accommodations to provide services to students, be at DSP and we continue to offer our services and tailor them to the students to best serve their needs.

Luis Castillo:
Outside of the tutoring, the CAEE also works as a place for students to come in and build community. It’s a space where you can come in and study. And I know that tutoring is a bit intimidating for a lot of people and it carries a bit of stigma because there’s the misconceived notion that an engineering, does it all alone here at Berkeley, but that’s not the case.

Luis Castillo:
No one here makes it all by themselves. And peers are always there to support you just as the faculty are. And our peers have gone to those same courses and are able to provide that tutoring based on their own personal experiences. So we opened our space to you and offer you to come in, even if it’s just a study. And if you have any questions, approach our tutors, our tutoring is not done via appointment, meaning that you don’t have to schedule an appointment ahead of time, but it’s drop in. Meaning that you could be here studying, but you could be studying for a CS course all of a sudden have a question and you’re free to approach our tutors and ask them a question regarding that course, sit with them for a little bit and then carry on to study by yourself or hang out with friends in the Center.

Luis Castillo:
Is there anything you would like to add Mo or Alex?

Alexandro Garcia:
I can add a little bit more about the community aspect in the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence? I think how Luis mentioned tutoring, we all need support, no matter what phase of life we’re in, we’re never doing it alone. And that’s like a big key element of the Center. And like a community like this, where we emphasize each other’s wellbeing and making sure that we’re all succeeding and not trying to compete with one another is a great way of just feeling more comfortable and more at home. And I think when you come to the Center, especially with tutoring, you are more likely to meet people who are in the same classes, same major and building a network of people that you can actually like have good relationships with outside of the Center. I think for me personally, that’s what I’ve really experienced a lot is that with all the interactions I’ve had as a student assistant, I made a lot of relationships from that. People I meet in my classes, the people I just see at the Center all the time, and it’s always great to see a familiar face.

Alexandro Garcia:
So I think that’s a great reason why to come to tutoring is that the community building it really does it by itself because you’re all there for the same reason. We’re all here as future leaders of our communities to make a difference. And I think as we come together during our time at college, we know we’re going to get through trepidations, but at least we have people around us or willing to support us and create a strong infrastructure of a friendship that will propel us through our four years of being here at UC Berkeley.

Laura Vogt:
Mo, is there anything you wanted to add?

Mohamed Mohamed:
I was just going to give him like a few examples of the community building that they’ve mentioned. I remember coming here as a freshmen and sophomore, like for the first half, at least just coming to the Center, struggling with a certain class. And I just find other people who are also that same class who are also struggling on the same exact thing that I’m struggling on and we just work on it together and it’s a great space to just come and just work with your friends or make friends to work with in the Center. So, yeah.

Laura Vogt:
Awesome. Well, thank you all so much. Where’s the best place for students to learn more about like your schedule and things?

Mohamed Mohamed:
I can answer this one to all the scheduling and all the course schedule for what courses or the tutor can all be found on our website at coesandbox.berkeley.edu/caee.

Laura Vogt:
Perfect. And when we were talking about tutoring, I know this semester, we’re doing a little bit of a hybrid. So there’re times when you’re in and or times when you’re onsite in 240 Bechtel on times when you’re going to be online, what’s doing online tutoring? How is that different? Do students have to do anything different to be part of that?

Alexandro Garcia:
For that ,It’s basically how we did it last year. Just going through Google form, we always require a Google form. Signing in is the most important part of Google and going into the Center. We really want to make sure nobody signs in, but in person presenting at five, o’clock have a little break for people to get accustomed and get used to go into a new location. And then more people coming in from going up to the online tutoring, same thing what Mohammad said, going through our website, there’ll be a link to join the online zoom starting at 5:30 PM. And then it’s going to give you a little sign up sheet, you just fill it out. And then once you are done with the sign in sheet, it will give you a zoom link. And that will send you directly to the Center.

Laura Vogt:
Excellent. And what kind of courses are being covered?

Luis Castillo:
Yeah, so now we cover most lower division courses. And right now we’re looking to advance to upper division purchase as well. In the past, we’d done upper division mechanical courses. Courses for civil engineering and courses in CS, but we’re also looking to expand in an electrical engineering and the other majors such as IEOR or nuclear. So if you’re an interested student who’s taken upper division courses or even lower division courses and have a large repertoire of courses that you have been an expert in and have gotten a B or better in them. We welcome you to apply, to be a tutor, the application just for now the most recent newsletter letter from college engineering, oh, please go ahead and apply it. It doesn’t take anything away. And I want it to highlight a little bit more about what Alex mentioned about the sign-in form and why it is important.

Luis Castillo:
We want to capture the information of people that come in to the Center to justify that it’s something that it’s needed. And with that, I want to highlight that our tutors want to support you. They like working with you. They look forward to this. Usually they’re waiting for someone to come in because they love the courses that they are tutoring and offering support in. And they want everyone who’s struggling to feel that same passion. Our tutors have struggled through those same courses as well, and they want to pay it forward. They want to make sure that it’s easier for the next person coming in. So reach out to them. They’re here to talk to you. And Laura also helps us posting profiles about our tutors and our student assistants on the website. And through that, you can get to know them as persons too.

Laura Vogt:
The nice thing about having the information on the website about who the tutors are, is a lot of times they tell you what organizations have been part of or what other extracurricular activities they’re doing. So you can also talk to them, not maybe just about a course, but you could talk them about other things that they’ve done.

Luis Castillo:
Exactly. Our overall goal at the end of the day is for you to build community here at engineering and for your time at Berkeley to be as fruitful as possible.

Laura Vogt:
So for Alex and Mo, since both of you are student assistants in the Center, what do you find when people come in, if they just don’t know where they need help, is that what you’re for to be able to help guide folks to find the right resources?

Alexandro Garcia:
You can kind of say that we’re here to answer any question that people have. I think, well, at least when people are coming in, our biggest priority is making sure you get the services you need. So, how we mentioned before signing in and you ask us, Hey, I’m looking for this specific class. So let’s say I’m looking for math 1A or I’m looking for CS 61 1A. Our job is, one of my responsibilities as student assistants is the point you to the direction of the closest tutor, or if they’re not in at that moment, you want to make sure you have the information available. So let’s say if you come in at 1:00 PM, but they’re not coming till 1:30 or 2:00 o’clock, we want to communicate that to you. So you can adjust for that, or find some more time to like study on your own before the tutor comes. But you can probably say that, that’s one of our responsibilities, but we do a plethora of other things other than just like directing you to tutoring as a student assistant at the Center.

Laura Vogt:
And so let’s talk a little bit more about the events that the Center also hosts. Can you tell us more about what we have to look forward to this semester?

Luis Castillo:
Definitely. Of course, some of the events that we have coming up is we will be hosting a resume clinic in which you can come in with your current resume and have different people that work for our professional staff here, engineering student services, look over your resume and provide you with tips or changes that you may want to make.

Luis Castillo:
We’ll also be having a LinkedIn workshop. We also offer professional headshot, Laura and Adam, who worked for the marketing and communications team here for the College of Engineering are providing their professional assistance in taking professional head shots. So you can post them on LinkedIn and look as presentable as possible. Just as well, we also provide workshops on how to get involved in research.

Luis Castillo:
Another of the workshops that we will be offering this semester is deal or no deal. This workshop is facilitative by Marvin Lopez, our director of Engineering Student Services. In this workshop, Marvin will give you many tips with the primary focus, at to how to negotiate, your next job offer. And every time the students participate in this workshop, they find it very insightful. It’s a lot of things you usually don’t usually get help with. Just as well, we will be offering all other different array of workshops from interviewing and different community events that the CAEE student assistants will be facilitating.

Laura Vogt:
For the events that we’re having. Is it going to be in-person online hybrid?

Luis Castillo:
Most of our events will be in person. Some of our community events will be both in person and online.

Laura Vogt:
And so where do students learn about all of our, the events that are going on?

Mohamed Mohamed:
Yeah. Students, they learn about all of these events through the ESS newsletter, our CAEE social medias or ESS social media is as well. We have posters hung up around the Center, around ESS. We have flyers that students can take. And last but not least, we have the website coesandbox.berkeley.edu/essevents where students can learn about all the upcoming events and where they can RSVP or sign up for the events.

Laura Vogt:
The other thing that we do on the website is that’s where the links are. So if it’s an event that we have taped, you can easily watch the taped event by going there and we’ll link it out on that page as well.

Laura Vogt:
So we talked a little bit about the student positions for CAEE. Is it just tutors that we are looking for right now?

Luis Castillo:
I guess before we move into that, could I highlight something really quickly?

Laura Vogt:
For sure.

Luis Castillo:
In, regarding our workshops and community events, I want to reiterate that all of our events will be requiring masks when they’re in person. So please go ahead and make sure that you are following all of the protocols that’s been sent out to our communications. via Berkeley Engineering.

Laura Vogt:
Perfect, thank you.

Luis Castillo:
And when regards to student positions in the CAEE. We have different positions open right now. We’re looking to hire student assistants. You can be the next Alexandro or Mohamed to help us in facilitating all of these services. Or if you are interested in being a tutor, we’re more than welcome you to apply to both of those positions.

Laura Vogt:
And we’ll have the links for that on our podcast page, as well as it’s on the CAEE page at the bottom.

Alexandro Garcia:
Can I add something to that? For anybody interested in becoming a student assistant, you can always come to us during normal work hours in person or online and ask us questions about our experiences working at the Center. It’s a great way of building your network of people, but also getting to know what the expectations are for being a student assistant. Because I’ve been here since my freshman year and there’s some turmoil, but there’s also a great sense of community that we have to uphold as making sure you understand what comes with being a student assistant is also very important. So please come talk to us. We really want to really want to give you answers to any of the questions you have.

Laura Vogt:
Can I have each of you share a story about this? What the CAEE or excuse me, share one story with us about a time that the CAEE has meant the most to you. If, you can narrow it down to one?

Mohamed Mohamed:
Yeah, I can try my best, but it’s also a week. One of the things that the CAEE does, that the CAEE facilitates, the ESS puts on is Alive Week, which is basically the RRR week events that they host. My freshman year, second semester, we had a pretty good Alive Week where they gave out, one of the days was a par-tea where they give out free Boba. And it was like a karaoke. And just like that whole week was just really nice to have knowing that finals coming up and the CAEE provides so many like opportunities for you to just network, just have a good time. And I really liked those Alive Week events where students are already stressed and worrying about so many things and they could just come distress for a day or for a week in the Center. So, yeah.

Alexandro Garcia:
And for me, I feel like I’m just thinking about it right now. And I think I figured out my favorite moment. It was Cal Day 2019. The last one we had in person, I remembered how much energy people had being able to interact with so many people, talking with families and actually getting some people to SIR to Berkeley right there on the spot and be like, Hey, this is a great opportunity. Like you have a lot of people here want to support your students. And I think that’s, what’s really brings a smile to my face is remembering how many people I met during Cal Day that I see now in classes or walking around or just in programs that I’m involved in. So I think that’s probably one of my like memorable, my most memorable moment or one of my favorite stories, I guess, at the Center.

Laura Vogt:
I love both of your memories because I think I do remember the one where we did the par-tea and did karaoke and, or the dancing and stuff. And then Cal Day, having the students come up and we did the I’m a Berkeley engineer t-shirt and things along those lines. So that’s awesome. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that any of you would like to add?

Alexandro Garcia:
I would probably just say for in-person, like Luis mentioned, we’re really want to keep the community and every community safe and healthy. I think that’s like the biggest thing that we have to always communicate with one another is the health and safety of one another is really important. So when we say have your mask on, we really mean, to have your mask on all the way properly put on. We want to make sure we’re protecting not only ourselves, but the people around us, we’re having tutors be out there at risk. So we want to be considerate of everybody’s and everybody’s personal space and it’s everything that’s going on. So I just want to reiterate, that’s a really important point for this coming semester, impossible school year. And we’re also, things can change at any moment based off the CDC or anything that’s going on in the news.

Alexandro Garcia:
So we’re trying to be flexible enough to when, if something does happen, hopefully it doesn’t, to be prepared for the next steps. So we just want to make sure that we communicate with our students what we do one services that we are trying our best to make sure that we are safe and responsible and trying to uphold like the Berkeley community and what we stand for here at the Center.

Mohamed Mohamed:
One thing that I like to add to that is along with the masks, one thing that I’ve been seeing around the Center a couple of times is eating and like drinking. Eating, and drinking we have a no eating and no drinking policy. And I’ve seen a couple of students do it already. And like, you have to take off your mask for that. And we have a strict mask on policy. So I would just like to reiterate that like, there’s no eating, no drinking within the Center, but there is like right in front of the CAEE or the ESS, there’s also like a few tables that people can eat and have their masks off. But within the Center, within the building, there’s no eating or drinking because we have a mask on policy.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you all for being here today and telling us more about the Center and the offerings that we’re going to have and sharing some of your memories with us. I really appreciate it. And thank you for everyone for listening to The (not so) Secret Guide to being a Berkeley Engineer. This is our last episode of the season. We are going to have a couple of special episodes throughout the year that are going to highlight students and their stories. But thank you for listening. Thank you for being with us this whole summer. And we look forward to sharing more stories and more student resources in the coming weeks.

Luis Castillo:
Thank you, Laura, for hosting us today and inviting us to participate in the podcast. We thank you for continuing to do this podcast. I think it continues to provide a tremendous amount of information for students who are looking for different services around not only Berkeley engineering, but throughout the college. So thank you once again, Mo, Alexandro, anything else that you would like to add?

Mohamed Mohamed:
No, I would just like to say thank you for having us. And we hope to see students around the Center. Feel free to come and say hi anytime.

Alexandro Garcia:
Yes, thank you so much. And we really hope to see you at the Center.