ESS 611: Center for Access to Engineering Excellence

Laura Vogt:
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 Communications for the College of Engineering. As part of the podcast, we’ve been introducing students to resources all across campus. And this week, we’re coming back to one of the best resources that’s actually right in our own backyard. It’s the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. Here to tell us more about the Center is Student Development Manager, Luis Castillo, and returning students, Dylan Steury, and Jason Guardado. Thank you so much for being here today. So let’s start off getting to know each of you a little bit better. So Luis, you’re up first. Why don’t you tell us more about yourself and your role for the College of Engineering?

Luis Castillo:
Of course. Thank you for having me here today. Again, my name is Luis Castillo, as Laura mentioned. My role is Student Development Manager for engineering student services. Within that role, I supervise the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. I also act as the main liaison between the College of Engineering and the Engineering Student Organizations. And outside of that, I manage a bunch of different events that we provide through Engineering STEM Services. All right. So I’ll pass it over to Jason now. Jason?

Jason Guardado:
Thank you so much, Luis. And thank you, Laura, for having me here on the podcast. I’ve always been interested in being a part of it. But yeah, as Luis mentioned, my name is Jason. I use the he and his pronouns, and I’m going to be a first year graduate student at UC Berkeley this upcoming semester. I did my undergrad in Berkeley as a Mechanical Engineering major, with the concentration Aerospace Engineering. And I’ve just recently graduated this past May with my Bachelor’s Degree, and I’m excited to continue on with my fifth year of Master’s this upcoming year. So hopefully, I’ll still be around the Center as a tutor. And I have worked at the Center, actually, for the past three years as a student assistant, but I’m transitioning over to the role of a tutor this upcoming year. And I’m really excited to see how that new capacity goes. And I’ll transfer over to Dylan.

Dylan Steury:
Thank you, Jason. My name’s Dylan Steury. I’m a bioengineering student here at UC Berkeley. I’m going into my junior year here as well. I had a bit of a later introduction to the Center, because my entire first year was online through the COVID. Luckily, I had a friend, Sarafina, who’s also a student assistant, a co-lead, like me and Jesús at the Center, who introduced me to it. And I just decided that I’d apply. And it’s one of the best decisions that I’ve made on campus so far. I’m super excited to meet everyone new and help people out in the Center.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank all three of you so much for being here today. Let’s start with a basic overview. We keep talking about the Center, or the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. What is the Center?

Dylan Steury:
Yeah, I can take that. So the Center is a place where we offer free tutoring to all STEM types. So there are tons of different courses that you can see a tutor. For example, basically, every single math class, because that is one of those core courses that everyone has to take. I know I use the physics one, personally. And then we also offer snacks, free snacks, because sometimes during the day you get hungry, or just whatever. We offer places to hang out and chill out, meet new people. Additionally, we offer events, especially during what we call Alive Week, which is during the RRR week of each semester. We offer different events each day, just to keep you going throughout the week and get you ready for class. If there’s anything else you want to add, Jason.

Jason Guardado:
Yeah, I think Dylan did a really good overview of the Center. I just want to emphasize that we also have a large lending library, or it’s moderately large lending library, where we give out a lot of school supplies that some people may not have the resources to buy for themselves. We give them out to them for free. So a lot of the items include laptops, textbooks, green books, and Scantrons for exams, and other general school supplies, like protractors or calculators that some people might need for their classes, as well as iClickers. And this is all on a free basis. You just check in with the student assistant, and they give it to you out for free. And a success closet for professional attire.

Laura Vogt:
And is there a way that students could find out about the scheduling, or just get more information about the Center?

Luis Castillo:
Yeah, definitely. So students can visit us at coesandbox.berkeley.edu/CAEE, and there they can find our schedule for day-to-day tutoring. And as Dylan already mentioned, we’re open from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, Monday through Thursday, and 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Fridays. And we have tutoring throughout those entire times. So you can look up our schedule, you can also see the events that we have. And then there’s also different links if you wish to be a student assistant in the future, or you would like to have a tutor position. Those are also available on that site as well.

Laura Vogt:
And are we back to having tutoring all on site?

Dylan Steury:
Yes, we are. Unless something changes, which then in that case, we’ll have it updated on the site. If something does change, that’s where all of our updates will be, on our website. But as of right now, we are all back in-person.

Laura Vogt:
And talking more about tutoring, who is it for exactly? And what courses are covered?

Jason Guardado:
Yeah, I can answer this. So tutoring is open to anyone. You do not need to be a part of the College of Engineering to come to the tutoring sessions. They are free drop-in for anyone. It’s just the majority of the people who do use the Center are College of Engineering, but we also have a lot of students from the College of Chemistry, and also from the College of Letters & Science.

Jason Guardado:
And essentially, the tutoring covers over 60 different courses, both lower division and upper division, of general STEM classes that, as Dylan mentioned, are prerequisites for a lot of the engineering courses that students take. So these include the math courses, the physics courses, chemistry courses, coding, or E7 courses for the lower division, which are then not only used for the engineering upper divisions, but also for other majors as well. So it’s a more open space, that we don’t really exclude. If you’re not from the College of Engineering, we’re not going to say, “You can’t use the Center.” It’s open to anyone who needs help in those courses.

Jason Guardado:
And we also offer help in upper division courses for civil engineering, mechanical engineering, bioengineering, electrical engineering, computer science. Those are our main ones. But we also have some, depending on what the classes our tutors have taken and are comfortable teaching other students. So yeah, it’s a wide range of classes that are beneficial to, not only just engineering students, but also to other students that are taking a STEM course, or majoring in the STEM field.

Laura Vogt:
And we started talking a little bit about events with the Alive Week that we know we have at the end of each semester. But can you tell me about more events that students can look forward to during the semester?

Luis Castillo:
Yeah, of course. Some of the events that we have coming up, we’re going to be doing different series of events. The first one that we have is professional, and it’s going to be followed by an academic series. So our first events that are going to be occurring this fall semester are professional series, and again, part one is going to be resume. That will be on September 21st. And we’re going to have professional headshots on October 5th, and LinkedIn on October 11. And again, all of this information is going to be communicated to you via the engineering newsletter that Laura sends out. You can also take a look at our website for events, and it’s going to let you know some of the information of upcoming events, past events, and things that you can look forward to. That website is engineering.Berkeley.edu/essevents.

Laura Vogt:
And we’ve really been building up our social media presence, so definitely check out ESS Berkeley or… Yeah, it’s ESS Berkeley for our Instagram, Twitter, and if anybody goes to it, Facebook, because I don’t think anybody goes to Facebook anymore.

Dylan Steury:
If I could just add one thing-

Laura Vogt:
Sure.

Dylan Steury:
… for the tutoring section, that, yeah, like Jason was saying, we really just want to bring people in who need help. And correct me if I’m wrong, Luis, but I think if a group of three people come in, we don’t have that course and they ask for it, we’ll try our best to find it a tutor for it.

Luis Castillo:
Yeah. So on different situations, students can request a course. Again, we have to have a critical demand to look for a tutor. We will work closely with the department and the ESS advisors to try to identify a student that would be a great candidate. And then if they meet our interview criterion, then we would hire them. But again, this is on a much rare basis, and there has to be a critical demand for it.

Laura Vogt:
So do we have any more positions open in the Center for students to apply to?

Luis Castillo:
Definitely. Yeah. If you are a new incoming transfer student, or a returning Berkeley student, we definitely have positions open in tutoring capacity. So you can join Jason as a tutor. And basically, as the students have already mentioned, we are looking for tutors that can cover lower division courses, that most of our engineering students take, and upper division courses. So take a look at our website, again, as I already mentioned is coesandbox.berkeley.edu/CAEE, and you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and see the application form.

Laura Vogt:
And Jason and Dylan, you both talked about that you’ve been involved with the Center for quite some time now. So can you each share one story about the Center that’s meant the most to you?

Dylan Steury:
Yeah. So I’m trying to think. There’s just so many. I mean, it would be really general, but meeting everyone there. Genuinely, some of my closest friends, tutors, students, the student assistants. But one story that stands out in particular was probably my first Alive Week, and in specific, the Dance Party, which essentially what that is, we have you do a Just Dance song, and you’ll get two tickets, one for raffle, which you can get various engineering swag and stuff. So it just depends on what there is, but usually, there’s like water bottles, stickers, tons of things.

Dylan Steury:
And then the other one is for a new [Bobo 00:11:20]. And if you’re new to Berkeley, one thing that you learn is Berkeley loves Bobo. It’s very, very, very popular. So just being able to see, it is a bit of more of a stressful time with finals coming up and stuff, but just seeing people relax, let loose. You see people go from stiff to loosening up throughout the song, you start to see them smile. And then they get that Bobo, and they just… They’re on top of the world. So it’s a nice break from reality, and it makes me smile. I have smiles, but being able to see them like that, happy and dancing, and stepping for a song, myself, it’s just always nice for me to see that I’m helping someone else.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. Jason, did you have a story?

Jason Guardado:
Yeah, I think Dylan’s, the dance party is definitely a memorable one, just all the times we have it. I think for me the most memorable idea I have of the CAEE is just when I went in the first time for tutoring. I think it was just one of those things where I was just never used to asking for help in high school. I think this is the case for a lot of students. You just did things on your own in high school. You either struggled by yourself, or you just got through things one way or another. And that was definitely for the case for me. So coming here and actually struggling with classes was definitely a new experience for me, definitely.

Jason Guardado:
I remember I took E7, which is the introduction to computer programming, that a lot of majors for engineering required as lower division. And I just had never done coding before in my life, so I honestly had no idea how to go about solving any of the homework or projects that they gave us. So I had known what the CAEE was, and I knew that they offered tutoring. So I actually went, and I was like, “I’ll just give it a try. Just never know.”

Jason Guardado:
And I remember that the tutor who helped me, his name is Bradley, who I think it is also been featured here in the podcast in previous years. And yeah, Bradley was really sweet. I feel he really made things so relatable on a student experience, not just someone talking to you as a tutor, more like as a friend or a peer talking to you, helping you throughout the work and stuff. And I just feel like that really eased me into the mindset of like, it’s definitely okay to ask for help, so never hesitate to ask for help when you need it, because it’s something that you need and people won’t think of you less of it. I know it might be a little embarrassing at first, but it’s something you just get used to and get into the habit of doing and just working with others.

Jason Guardado:
So I definitely feel like that was something that really made me love the space at the Center a lot, just knowing that people were there to help you without any judgment. And yeah, I think just having him as the first person I interacted with really on a more deeper level at the Center was a very core memory for myself, especially during my first year at Berkeley. So yeah, wherever Bradley is right now, I hope he’s doing amazing.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you both so much. Luis, was there anything that you wanted to add?

Luis Castillo:
One of the things that I do want to share is not a particular memorable experience, even though it might stem from one, is when we first started our coffee and hot drinks service that we offer at the Center. And every year, it’s funny to see us make the first pot of coffee and thinking, “Well, will anybody show up?” And then just seeing how people start coming into the Center to just get coffee, start asking questions. And I guess that’s my favorite part of the year is when we start bringing in people. They start to get settled in the space, asking questions, becoming familiar, and making it their home. And then you’ll start seeing students that came in that first day out of curiosity or out of wanting a cup of coffee become part of the regulars that you see at the Center.

Laura Vogt:
That’s awesome. I always forget that you started the coffee service in the morning. Is there anything about the Center that we haven’t talked about that we need to make sure we tell people about?

Dylan Steury:
So one thing that we haven’t mentioned yet was there’s often a popup event that we have at the Center, Popup Breakfast. So we order in breakfast from a local place, and I would just keep your eyes peeled on the email. It gets sent out before the event happens. So get up and come. The earlier, the better in this case. They tend to go very fast. So I don’t know what else-

Laura Vogt:
I feel like it’s self-serving since I’m the one that writes the ESS newsletter every week, but I really want people to open it and read it, because that’s where you’re going to find out about things like the popup events. You’re going to find out about the events that you’re putting on, reminders about what tutoring is available.

Dylan Steury:
Yeah. And I think what… I mean, guess I think, by that, I mean, I’m in charge of it this year, the social media presence of the CAEE, but we’re going to expand it, make sure that it’s not just… We can have more of a social media presence so more awareness of our events going. So that’ll be nice.

Laura Vogt:
Yeah, that’ll great.

Luis Castillo:
So read your newsletter, please.

Dylan Steury:
You don’t want to miss a free breakfast.

Laura Vogt:
Really am… It’s a little, I don’t know if disappointing is the right word, but it’s discouraging, I guess, in some ways, when you find students that are seniors that have never heard of the Center.

Dylan Steury:
Yeah.

Laura Vogt:
I just want to continue being able to get the word out about this offering that’s there, because it’s such an awesome program that you have.

Dylan Steury:
Yeah. I really love it. And I’ve had a shorter time than most people, and I experienced that last year. So we’d have a popup event for lunch or something. And other students from other majors would come in. Like we said, we’re not picky or choosy on from which college comes in. And they’re like, “Oh, what is this place?” And we’re like, “Hey, the Center.” And they’re like, “Oh, what is it?” And we’re like, “We offer free tutoring. We have popup events, like the one that you’re at right now.” And they just thought it was great, and they just never heard of it before. So yeah, just continuing to get the word out is just the constant goal.

Laura Vogt:
Definitely. Well, thank all three of you, Luis, Jason, and Dylan for coming in today.

Dylan Steury:
Thank you so much.

Luis Castillo:
[inaudible 00:18:13]

Jason Guardado:
Thank you so much for having us.

Laura Vogt:
And thank you, everyone, for listening to The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I look forward to podcasting with you next week. Bye.