Day 2: August 9, 2010

Eddie Coryn, Brittany Scherer, David Shirley, Kendall Troesch, and Ross Wagner



Day 2 in London was quite the learning experience. We started the morning with a Toolbox Talk with Professor Abraham where we discussed integrity. She shared a quote from Dr. Bob Bowen where he stated, “It takes years to build your reputation, and only minutes to destroy it.” Her advice was well heeded. Next we had a guest speaker from industry, Mr. David Hull. He is an engineer at TRW in Lafayette, IN. He had many valuable tips for our class from his professional experience. When Mr. Hull hires engineers he looks for integrity, honesty, communication skills, personal style, passion, eagerness, and initiative. He told the group that looking at the body language of your interviewer and knowing how to read people’s emotions is a skill that every young professional should take time to develop. Mr. Hull looks for employees that will fit well with his team and are leaders who are ready to contribute.

After our lunch break, we went on a tour of University College London. We met with Monika Malak and she gave us an informative presentation about UCL. The college was founded in 1826 and is the third oldest college in England. It is 4th in the Times Higher World Education Rankings. UCL professors and researchers have done a lot of groundbreaking research, with 21 Nobel Peace Prize winners. There are 22,800 undergraduate and graduate students with 8,100 international students. UCL encourages diversity and allows students to take up to 50% of their classes from another department. Unlike Purdue, UCL has trimesters, with the first and second trimesters being teaching trimesters and the third for final examinations. The courses also tend to require much more independent study that universities in America. Students interested in studying at UCL should check out the following website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/international-students/study-abroad/overseas-students-at-ucl/. We split up into two groups and went on a campus tour. We learned interesting tidbits during the tour but didn’t get to see a lot of campus due to ongoing construction.

We returned to Ramsay Hall where each of us gave a two-minute “elevator pitch.” Each student had a different prompt where we had to “sell” ourselves to prospective employers. It was a very constructive exercise. We learned a lot about each of our peers and their future career aspirations.