This panel was an ACM event (ACM Chicago Chapter together with the ACM Student Chapter of IIT). I was part of the original conversation, but I didn’t realize that I was expected to put the whole panel together. When I realized it, I was in Valencia, and it turned to be not an easy task; both because I was remote, and because I didn’t have enough time.
It was a miracle that, after all, we had enough panelists, and even two “extras.” The only bad part was that because of late advertizing, we didn’t have as many students as we could, but everyone who showed up. enthusiastically participated in the speed networking and asked good questions. One of my former co-workers is an IIT alumni, and his partricipation was especially valuable. I had great time catching up with him (he offered to give me a ride home, and we used this time to talk about everything happening in our lives). I remember how I started working with him, and I couldn’t be happir with where he is now professionally, and what kind of a person he became (not like I can take any credit for this, but I am still proud of him :)).
We also talked about challenging times the IIT is experiencing. I thought that Illinois Tech would be one of the schools expecially negatively affected by drastically reduced number of international students coming to the US, and I learned that they had to layoff a significant portion of the faculty. That’s a problem for many other schools, even for community colleges. One of my friends who teaches ESL in Chicago City Colleges told me that her hours were 50% cut on almost no notice (and she also told me multiple horrow stories about her students being arrested).
Since this panel happend right after midterms, we all were in a relatively high spirits and rather hopeful about the future lying ahead.
The picture was taken at the very end of the event, when almost everyone left, but still something to remember 🙂
