February 10, 2021
Meet Arden White!
Hey, I'm Arden! Currently on my fourth co-op (between 2B and 3A) and my program is Systems Design Engineering (SYDE). I'm apart of the 2023 cohort.
What do you do as an engineering ambassador?
I talk to prospective (high school, but also Grades 5, 6, 7 and 8!) students about what their interests are and what engineering at UWaterloo is like! There's a lot of ways I do this:
~I do Eng Chats (feel free to request me! I'd love to chat with you about engineering at UWaterloo)
~I speak on Women in Engineering panels at events like GoCodeGirl and GoEngGirl and I volunteer at these events, answering both students' and parents' questions.
~I mentored soon-to-be first year engineering students last summer in the University's first ever Waterloo Ready program where we met for a couple hours each week for two months leading up to September. I definitely recommend participating if you are an incoming student!
Why did you choose your program?
By putting in a lot of work discovering what I was interested in! I spent 4+ years (you're reading that right, I was thinking about this in elementary school!) attending UWaterloo events and talking to people in careers I was interested in: lawyer, architect, engineer, designer, professor. I attended more than six capstone events. I thought about what I enjoyed in my 6 years of student leadership and my many years of Tech Design. The common thread was that I like looking at problems from the big picture perspective!
I remember attending the SYDE capstone after so many capstone symposiums (think cool science fair), and I had a moment when I was listening to a project by fourth year students that developed a boardgame to educate elementary school students on municipal water management that I thought: Yes, this is the kind of problem I want to be solving at the end of my degree.
What are your plans after graduation?
Become a full-time UX Designer! But if we're talking not career related, then I plan to buy a kitchen aid mixer and bake bread all the time.