By Sandra Vo, Staff Writer & Publisher
Photo by Sandra Vo
At 3:30 a.m., the Regis van whirs to life with barely more energy than its occupants. Five members of the Regis’s Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE) are about to head out to the airport, where they will be flying to San Diego to attend the SASE West Regional Conference hosted by University of California San Diego. Although exhausted and running on various amounts of sleep, there is a sense of excitement in the air that in just a few hours, they will be in a different state with weather 60 degrees higher than in Denver.
Photo courtesy of Sandra Vo
SASE has a reputation as a “career development” club, but there is more than building a resume and learning how to connect to people on LinkedIn. SASE is about connecting with people in real life, getting first hand advice from job recruiters, and also having the time of your life on a trip with the majority of the expenses covered by Regis. At San Diego, the members arrived a full day earlier before the start of the conference, where they power-napped, ate dim sum at the famous San Diego Din Tai Fung, and explored the beach at sunset.
Photo by Sandra Vo
The West Regional Conference itself was a well-organized and impressively designed event. The SASE team at UCSD worked tirelessly to create t-shirts, stickers, advertise on social media, bring in job recruiters from Lockheed Martin, Pfizer, HRL Laboratories, Illumina, and the Keck Graduate Institute. The result was workshops featuring Q&A’s with UCSD professors, working professionals, networking opportunities, dumpling making, and a tour of the gorgeous UCSD campus. Both breakfast and lunch were provided, with conference attendees eating Einstein bagels and banh mi respectively.
Photo courtesy of Sandra Vo
Overall, the SASE conference is ideal for people looking to break into the job market as Asian students, people working in STEM/engineering, or even as just a weekend getaway. Requirements to attend the conference only include being an active member of SASE (attending roughly half the meetings) and expressing interest in going to the conference.
For those interested, please contact regis@saseconnect.org to learn more, and SASE looks forward to seeing you at our conference next year!