The document outlines several ideas to help engineering students from small town universities feel more secure in their personal, social, and technical skills to successfully transition from school to work. The ideas involve more hands-on learning through lab work, internships, field trips to companies, and real-world projects. They also suggest meaningful learning experiences like mentoring, workshops on career skills, and networking opportunities with engineers and alumni. A variety of extracurricular and social activities are proposed as well to build students' confidence and flexibility.

1. “How to make engineering students
from a small town university feel secure
about their personal, social and technical
skills to succesfully overcome
the transition from school to work?”
Vesna Karmelic
Chile

2. Ideas 1-16
More teaching by doing:
 Lab work and experiments
 Field trips to local small companies
 Field trips to big companies in other cities
 Field trips to small and big companies in other countries.
 Part-time internships since first year of College in different companies
 Real problem solving in classes.
 Real companies case studies
 Group projects.
 Using Peer instruction strategies in classes
 Role playing of real job or professional situations
 Create a Junior-Company at the university where the students can get
involved in real jobs.
 Observations in real companies and work environnments
 Follow an engineer for a week
 Workshops in communication and leadership skills.
 Workshops on how to apply to a job.
 Apply to real jobs and go through the interviews process

3. Ideas 17-30
Meaningful learning through:
 Getting local engineers as menthors for the students
 Getting national engineers as menthors for the students
 Get international engineers as menthors for the students
 Involve older students as menthor for younger ones.
 Bring professional experts and engineers from different fields to classes to talk to
the students.
 Group Case study of an engineer
 Make personal learning portafolios
 Asking for personal and professional feedback from significant others
assignments.
 Workshops with our teachers to talk about work life.
 Create an alumni club to allow students meet and network with engineers and
people related to their discipline.
 Create a real company inside the university, where students can apply to work.
 Weekends intensive workshops on career development with a interdisciplinary
team.
 «How to learn from failure» workshops
 Interviewing engineers about their failures experiences and how they overcame
them.

4. Ideas 31-46
More Learning by having fun or doing different things:
 Parties for engineeers to meet.
 Create a monthly Engineer´s Meet –Up, bringing guest to talk to the students.
 Offer dancing classes to enginnering schools.
 Offer workshops on how to speak well in public.
 Offer drama courses for engineers and other programs to develop communication
skills.
 Teach students how to improve their body posture and its relationship to their
feelings of self confidence.
 Stress management workshops for students
 Story-telling workshops for professors and students
 Seminars organized by the students in subjects they think they need to learn more.
 English classes for engineers.
 Summer Trips to work on social projects using their knowledge.
 Creating projects with international teams
 Creating an international network of engineering students.
 Create a job network for recently graduated engineers.
 Create the Program: «Spend a semester in…. ( other university, other country…)
 Create the program: «Host an engineer student in your house» ( from other
school, other country)

5. Ideas 47-61
 Quit School for a while (a month, a semester, a year) and go work in a company doing
anything.
 Quit school for a while and go travel anywhere else in the world, working in anything but
engineering related activities.
 Bring into the faculty staff actors, psychologysts, designers, dancers, musicians and
artists.
 Organize artistic conquest and activities where students participate with a protagonic
role.
 Workshops on poetry and writing for students.
 Organize Job or work fairs where students can meet and talk to people coming from real
companies.
 Personal image workshops for students.
 How to use social networks to built my identity workshops
 Create «A new place to visit (each day, week, semester, year)» Program for students.
 Create: «A new person to meet (each day, week, month,etc.) « Program for students.
 Create «A new company to visit this month» Program
 Create a «How to become a good Boss» Program
 Create a virtual company where students can work with workmates from everywhere in
the world and face real life situations.
 Videorecord students in their performance in classes so they can get feedback from
observing themselves.
 Stablish the «Day of acting like I wasn´t me» to teach students to be more flexible and
learn from these experiences.

6. Ideas 62-66
 Take students to visit the biggest and more important
companies in the world
 Take students to visit the «better places to work»
companies.
 Take students to visit companies that are in trouble.
 Bring unemployed engineers to talk to the students about
their experiences and how they handle it.
 Take students to visit the most prestigious colleges and
universities in the world teachin engineering and make
them talk to their students and professors.