The 2022 Spring Semester Professional Development and Presentation Guest Speaker Series took place from February 23rd to March 30th. The series included 12 guest speakers and is part of an online course taught by Professor Xiangming Li. The class is made up of students from China, Mongolia, Brazil, the United States, and Uzbekistan.
In the first session, which took place on February 23rd, Professor Li’s three teaching assistants and current international PhD students Albert Yu, Sakeena Safi, and Nana Owusu-Tieku spoke to the class. They each spoke about their personal, academic, and professional development. Albert focused on his experience working in industry; Sakeena focused on her experiences being an international student in China; Nana focused on her experience as an international student in the US, Australia, and China.
Student speakers, Albert Yu, Sakeena Safi, and Nana Owusu-Tieku (left to right)
The second guest speaker session on March 2nd featured two Chinese PhD students, Ning Ding and Wenmeng Zhou. Ning talked about his research in computer science and the important factors that led to his success in the field. Wenmeng spoke about what inspired her to study mechanical engineering, her research, and her experiences as a female student and graduate in her field.
Ning Ding & Zhou Wenmeng
Former TBSI master’s student Alberto Maria Pepe and current TBSI master’s student Erik Valle were invited to speak at the third speaker session on March 9th. Alberto, who is currently a 2nd year PhD student in Engineering at the University of Cambridge, talked about why he chose China for higher education and the difficulties and successes he faced in his academic career. Erik discussed how he decided on China for his master’s program as well as how the pandemic influenced his decisions and affected his academic pursuits.
Alberto Pepe & Erik Valle
The fourth guest speaker session on March 16th started the “industry vs. academia” portion of the guest speaker lectures to which professionals in either industry or academia were invited to speak, including Dr. Feng Guo. Dr. Guo, who currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, has extensive industry experience in the field of machine learning and has worked at global tech giants such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn as well as corporations such as Walmart. His talk gave insights into different company cultures and career advancement strategies.
Dr. Feng Guo
In the following session on March 23rd, Professor Jianwu Lin and Professor Lele Peng were invited to address the class. Prof. Lin has extensive experience guiding students and his talk addressed preparation for a career on Wall Street. Prof. Peng, who has been recognized as a highly cited researcher by Clarivate for the past three years, shared his own personal career development. He also gave professional career development advice around his adage, “Stay humble, Stay cool, Stay curious, Stay ambitious.”
Professor Jianwu Lin & Professor Lele Peng
The final session of the 2022 Professional Development and Presentation guest speaker series took place on March 30th and featured Professor Kuang Yu and Ms. Dena Tang, talent and development expert at Huawei University.
In the session, Professor Yu shared his experience on pursuing a career in academia and dispelled some common misconceptions about working in academia. He shared that young professors are expected to wear many hats: perform research, advise students, apply for grants, and work long hours. Despite these aspects, Dr. Yu highlighted that a career in academia allows you to truly explore and investigate your passions, and become an expert on a topic.
In her talk, Ms. Tang introduced Huawei’s business structure, its products, and clients. Drawing from her extensive experience in HR, she gave advice on what employers are looking for from job applicants as well as what she believes would help students stand out during the hiring process.
Professor Kuang Yu & Ms. Dena Tang
The Professional Development and Presentation course was created by Professor Lin Zhang in the spring of 2016 and the course is currently taught by Associate Professor Xiangming Li, with Nana Owusu-Tieku as the teaching assistant and 2 other students providing additional support as needed for the 2022 spring semester. Under the instruction of Professor Li, the course won the award titled “Course in Excellence in TBSI” in 2019. The course focuses on career development and helping students demonstrate their logic and decision-making thinking ability through verbal and nonverbal behavior in the work environment.
Career development is fostered throughout the course by inviting guest speakers from industry and academia to share their experiences and values with the students. As students become familiar with speaker’s backgrounds prior to the guest speaker sessions, they have an opportunity to prepare questions to ask during the live Q&A sessions that follow the guest speakers’ speeches that are well thought-out and relevant to each students’ individual needs and career goals.
Besides the guest speaker sessions, the course uses a variety of exercises to develop the students’ professional presentation skills, such as writing academic resumes and industry resumes, learning how to be an active audience member, and utilizing the pyramid structure to improve the logic and credibility of speeches. The course also uses cutting-edge ed-tech tools, such as Rain Classroom to implement effective personal evaluation and Tencent Document to encourage peer review style assessment.
Written by Nana Owusu-Tieku
Edited by Alena Shish & Yuan Yang
