By Colin Jun

On Tuesday, the Engineering Club hosted a short presentation during a community meeting. The Engineering Club invited two guest speakers from General Motors, Global Chief Engineer Douglas Houlihan and Planning and Program Manager Rodolpho Campos. Throughout the lecture, the two speakers mainly suggested ways for SAS Pudong students to achieve their dreams and become successful leaders in the future.

Mr. Houlihan first started the lecture with his personal story about his family and his career in General Motors. He stressed the importance of working as one team to finish a project successfully. He further explained how he participated and collaborated with others in the production of Chevrolet Camaro as the example. Mr. Houlihan also explained the role of different engineers in car production. He concluded his presentation with several points to become a successful leader. Mr. Houlihan further emphasized the importance of displaying consistent positive energy to the people and having the expectation to give more to others than receive more. Else than the attitude, he described what other skills the leader need – such as technical depth and experience and collaboration with talented people.

Mr. Campos also delivered a short speech about mentoring and how to seek career advice. Using his life at Yale University as the anecdote, he explained the importance of having a balanced life and suggested SASPD students look for sports they can work on. Through explaining how Mr. Houlihan provided help on him to get into Yale University, he also presented how powerful it is to seek mentoring and career advice from others.

Since the lecture happened during a community meeting, all the teachers and students had the opportunity to listen to the presentation from two guest speakers. Although all the students heard the same presentation, students had varying opinions towards the presentation on Tuesday.

Kevin Jun, a freshman, said, “It was a great opportunity to learn the car production process. Also, it was interesting to learn about what an engineer does in the company.”

Ryan Strong, a senior, said, “Although the stories they presented sounded interesting, I think the presentation did not have a clear point. At least for me, it was difficult to figure out the main purpose of the presentation.” about the presentation.

Jiwon Shin, another senior at SASPD, said, “Since I like the cars, the anecdote about car production, such as the production of Chevrolet Camaro, was interesting. However, because I am not going to major in the field of engineering, some parts felt a bit irrelevant to me.”

Ryley Starta, the president of Engineering Club, said in an email that the club hosted the lecture on Tuesday to “show that Engineering Club is interested in making a difference for our community,” “bring attention to the new club,” and “bring real-life example of what we are learning and aspiring towards.” Starta said General Motors is “a very successful company that has expanded all around the world. They are also a company encapsulating a variety of engineers…They seemed like a perfect fit for an initial introductory presentation as they had such a broad reach across the engineering spectrum.”

According to Starta, Engineering Club is looking at hosting future presentations with the various companies. They are also working on organizing factory tours where students can go to the factories and observe the production process. The club is also planning to host a design challenge competition later in the year, which students can all participate and see how what it is like to work in engineering.

Feature photo from Wikipedia