New Event Offers Insight on Engineering Major for UNL Freshmen
Cultivating the future leaders of our workforce is beginning earlier and earlier these days. With school starting up once again, kicking off another year full of promise, we recently had an exciting event for those thinking about engineering as a career path.
The program is called NUBE, or Nebraska Undergraduates Becoming Engineers. The two-day event, which took place on August 16 and 17, is for first-year University of Nebraska students entering the College of Engineering. As these hopeful students get an orientation to college life, they also receive a great opportunity to learn more about their career path and what possibilities await them.
The great thing about NUBE is that it gives these students the ability to meet with not only current engineering students and faculty, but also with representatives from the engineering industry. This year, 511 eager students took part in the program and had a chance to get acclimated to life on campus with various welcome events and orientations in addition to meeting and networking with area engineers. By touring Lincoln-area engineering locations, the students met one-on-one with leaders from 18 companies for around an hour to discover what engineers do on a daily basis and also about future employment and internship opportunities.
It’s a continuing win-win for students and employers alike – the students get an idea of what could be in their futures and what’s expected of them professionally, while the industry leaders get to meet potential employees and look at what skills and needs these young people can bring to the table.
As the workplace continues to diversify, it’s vital that we provide a great environment and pipeline for these young minds to flourish.
Earlier this summer, the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development completed its second summer of the MyTern program. Much like NUBE, MyTern provides young job seekers a place to network with fellow interns, learn from those who were interns themselves and meet with local entrepreneurs who have helped make Lincoln such a great place to live in and raise a family.
Although it’s likely a few years down the road for these new students, raising a family continues to be a main attraction and draw for coming to Lincoln. Recent 2018 rankings by Zumper put us as the second-best city in the country to raise a family, as Lincoln scored well thanks to an educated workforce, lower cost of living, lower child care costs and other factors that bode well for starting a family.
Connecting local talent with local industry as early as possible will continue to serve us well in the long run and will ultimately be a great thing for Lincoln.
With the amount of thought and effort put into making a successful event like NUBE take place, it shows that our private sector and our institutions of higher learning have recognized a problem in finding employees and taken a proactive way to try and solve it.
The Chamber’s mission is to improve the lives of Lincoln residents by providing increased economic opportunity and can only be accomplished together. For more information on the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, (www.lcoc.com) please contact Jaime Henning at jaimehenning@lcoc.com.