Two months ago, Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the largest student organization for technology at Florida International University (FIU), arranged valuable workshops for students interested in pursuing careers involving technology.
To kick off the week, UPE Advance, UPE’s program dedicated to career development, held a technical career fair prep on February 11th at 8:00PM EST. The event covered the basics of a tech application process, such as most commonly asked behavioral questions and appropriate responses, how to deliver an ideal description of one’s background, and ATS (Applicant Tracking System). The lucky 55 attendees received the opportunity to also prepare their responses and gain comfortability speaking professionally through mock interviews too!
Joseph Boylan, Director of UPE Advance, promotes his program’s efforts by emphasizing the importance behind the transition from a collegiate career into the workforce. He says, “We [UPE Advance] combine the overall skills and preparation you need to succeed when applying to a position and networking with several recruiters and companies.” Considering how their workshop described every aspect of the application process, from submitting one’s resume to potential interview questions, UPE Advance truly is a one-stop shop to learn how to set oneself up for success in tech!
Following the prep was UPE InfoTech’s workshop called “Intro to Databases with SQL”. To preface, UPE InfoTech is designed to educate its members on informational technology, and it is led by director Lillian Ash. In this particular event, Ash guided over 50 students through an exploration of relational databases and database management systems. Since this is a more complex topic of computer science, she ensured understanding by going over tables, queries, and keys, as well as other fundamentals needed to insert and retrieve data.
Elaborating upon the usefulness of the SQL language for over 50 years, Ash notes how, “As technology advances, data sets get larger and more complex. SQL serves as a standardized language that allows us to interact with this data.” She declares it imperative to understand the fundamentals of how data is stored and retrieved through SQL for anyone interested in data science or data analytics. Through her thorough explanation in the session, it is evident that SQL is a language that students should be familiar with when pursuing a tech career that involves handling big data.
Aside from the application process and the logistics of data storage and retrieval, students were prepared for tech jobs by being taught proper UI/UX prototyping too. This subject was handled by none other than UPE Design, the program responsible for teaching UI/UX & product management, on February 13th at 6:00PM EST. UI/UX design refers to user interface and user experience, respectively, and the two essentially work together to create an intuitive product that’s visually mapped and provides a positive user experience. To effectively get a grasp of the concepts, the 40+ active participants followed along and built a functioning prototype application and dove into design theory and the software Adobe XD.
Simply in the span of three days, over a hundred students interested in tech careers were better prepared, for UPE equipped them with useful knowledge of the application process, data science, and UI/UX prototyping. To view each workshop, please feel free to check out the following recordings:
- Tech Career Fair Prep: https://youtu.be/xs6pLsexkAk
- Intro to Databases with SQL: https://youtu.be/qa9IrW-gU4s
- UI/UX Prototyping: https://youtu.be/-AYwXRViyCc
If you’re interested in the organization and/or any of the programs, our UPE community welcomes you on https://discord.gg/upefiu. See you there!
Written by: Liana Louise Adaza