Involvements at Purdue: CESAC
My Experience in Getting Involved
One of my favorite parts about Purdue are the many ways to get involved outside of the classroom. For me, I found a community and home through the Civil Engineering Student Advisory Council, or CESAC. Since joining CESAC my first semester of sophomore year and later becoming the director of community relations, I have had the opportunity to work with 25 of the top student-leaders on campus to serve the Civil Engineering student body in many ways.
Professional Development
As a CESAC member, I worked on a team to host the largest discipline-specific career fair on campus. With 175 Civil Engineering companies and over 500 students in attendance, there was a lot of planning that went into this event. My specific roles for this event included leading a team in the publicity of the career fair. This included delegating tasks such as social media posts, flyers to be hung around campus, and participating in publicity-based class talks for Civil Engineering classes.
On the day of the career fair, I was able to drive recruiters to and back from the parking garage and the fair in a Purdue shuttle. This was an awesome opportunity and I was able to make many connections and meet a lot of great people while sitting in the Purdue traffic. I was also able to walk around, check students in, take photos, and speak with many companies during the career fair. All recruiters in attendance get a resume booklet with all of the CESAC member’s resumes, giving the CESAC members a leg-up in the experience. This has been an amazing experience and in this role I have grown so much in leadership, communication, and organization.
Being in an organization with other civil engineering students, I was able to ask the upperclassman for class advice, resume review, and I always felt like I could look up to the older members, even when they graduate, as professional mentors. We also attended semesterly alumni-panels, where we had the opportunity to ask CESAC alumni in industry a wide range of questions.
Community
Although Purdue is a large school, my involvement in CESAC makes Purdue feel a lot smaller. My CESAC friends are all in my classes and I can always find a friendly face in each class and someone to sit with and do homework with.
Outside of classes, we go on many retreats. This past year we have taken trips to the Indiana Dunes, Top Golf, Go-Karting, and Ax-throwing. We also have done multiple intramural sports as an organization and have had many inner-socials, where members just hang out! These experiences have been some of my most fun and enjoyable moments at Purdue and I would consider my CESAC friends some of my best friends.
Another way that CESAC serves the student body is with all of the community events we host. We use the profits from the career fair to host events such as the back to school barbeque, monthly bagel breakfasts, the Civil Social, Senior Send-off and more. These events allow Civil students to hang out, enjoy free food, and meet more people in their major.
Service
Community service is something that is extremely important to me and I have been able to serve the community through CESAC. We sell Civil Social shirts to the student population and all money that we receive gets donated to Food Finders! We have also been able to participate in other events such as writing letters against depression and Winterization. We also help pay for a lot of Hampton Hall of Civil Engineering renovations. This past year we have helped pay for renovations to the green roof and many furniture renovations within the building.
Why get involved?
There are so many ways to get involved at Purdue. For me, not only have I grown and developed professionally, but I have met so many great people and had so many fun experiences. If you are passionate about something, odds are that there are other people who share that same passion as you and there are ways to explore that through getting involved at Purdue. If you want to see more about CESAC, check out the instagram @purduecesac.
Sarah Teehan, CE '24
Recruitment Project Committee Blog Team
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