KSEA-SC chapter hosted the online mentoring session for undergraduate and graduate students in the Southern California areas and guided how to choose their right majors and helped them understand the career path of each major after graduating college. This event has been hosted every year and the mentoring session was virtually planned the same as last year. See the flyer to check the detailed contents of the event.
The chapter invited academic/industry experts from each area, such as mechanical/aerospace, civil/environmental engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, biology, chemical engineering, and so on. The detailed goals for this session are listed below.
- How to start preparing for academic and industry positions
- The current technology and scientific trends in a professional field
- What you should say or not say during an interview
- How to lead and actively engage the interviewers
- Strategic networking skills in academia/industry
- Many critical insights in reviewing applications
This mentoring session encouraged many potential KSEA members to join the KSEA family by communicating with KSEA members and learning how to prepare for successful career development strategically by interacting with prestigious scholars and professionals in multiple domains. The KSEA-SC chapter actively advertised this event via newsletters and emails, which resulted in more RSVPs from the students, as shown in the below sample Advertisement in the “Korea Daily” newsletter.
The KSEA-SC chapter president, Eunjung Chae (CSULB), led the mentoring meeting with 12 academic/industry expert mentors (including the three KSEA-SC leaders): Jingi Hong (CSULB) Jihwan Kang (CSULB), Jules (Julim) Lee (NASA JPL), Sean Kwon (CSULB), Helen Jung (CBU), Hyunki Kim (3M) Eunice Kang (Apple), Wonhee Jung (Blizzard Entertainment), Taehyun Kim (Amazon AWS), Haekyung Lee (Cue Health), and Eun Bin Go (Emerald Cloud Lab). The mentors met with students and explained their majors and company information. A total of 43 members participated in this session and had a great and productive conversation with students. The chapter president, Dr. Eunjung Chae, presented the objectives of this mentoring session and shared the history of the mentoring session before and after the pandemic season. After that, each speaker (industry experts and professors) shared their career paths with students. Successful career stories from experts surely inspire our young future STEM members. The pictures below are group pictures via zoom.
To effectively lead the session, breakout sessions were created for each major. The mentor hosted each room in terms of major and students joined each breakout room where they wanted to communicate with mentors. Students can freely move from one to another to communicate with other mentors. The students who joined this meeting were happy to have enough time to communicate with professionals and it was remarkably effective and successful for them to learn more about their majors. The sessions were extremely helpful for students to select their major.
Reported by Eun Jung Chae, Ph.D.
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
California State University Long Beach
KSEA-SC president 2022-2023
KSEA e-Letters 