Mentor Nights

Last Modified: April 4, 2019
by Jason Salazar

Upcoming Events and Announcements – Follow links below to volunteer.

For information on additional local engineering activities in our region please see our Education page and our Events Calendar.

Seeking Additional PSEC Mentor Night Volunteer Coordinators

The Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) is seeking additional Mentor Night Volunteer Coordinators for our annual Mentor Nights program either as a back-up or as a future coordinator for an event that you would like to support. Our current Mentor Night Coordinators are Paul Grant, Luis Leon, and Harry Ehlers who help support mentor event requests from multiple Universities and Colleges in our region.

The primary role of a Mentor Coordinator is to be a point contact for the volunteers from the multiple local engineering societies. This role is not limited to member societies current officers or to a representative to PSEC but anyone who has enjoyed volunteering at the multi-society Mentor Nights. This is an opportunity for one (or more) events in the year – primarily conducted by email.

We have documented guidelines, tools, and support for you to help with these instructional and successful events. This is an opportunity to support our local Universities and Colleges and the mentoring events we help to organize.

Please contact the PSEC President at president@pseconline.org if you are interested and would like to learn more.

Purpose of PSEC Mentor Night Supported Events

The purpose of PSEC Mentor Nights hosted at participating colleges and universities is to give engineering students (freshmen through seniors, & occasionally high school students) an opportunity to ask questions in person from a variety of practicing engineers, engineering alumni, and faculty about the wide spectrum of engineering disciplines, professions, career pathways, continuing education post-graduation, professional registration considerations, responsibilities, and ethics over food and refreshments.

Description of PSEC Mentor Night Supported Events

PSEC co-sponsors and/or co-organizes Mentor Night events with participating universities and colleges locally by seeking volunteers to support their event. All or a portion of the event at the college includes mentor tables identified by the mentor volunteer’s name, engineering discipline and/or profession. Mentors usually bring some physical examples of their work or something to help focus the student’s attention and discussions. They may also have a presentation or engineering drawings to show, a paper handout to give the students, information about their company internships, societies events and/or scholarship information. Examples of exemplary printed handouts created by two different Mentor volunteers can be found here: Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering.

Depending on the event planned, the participation can range from 10 to 50 volunteer Mentors, with 20 to 150 students attending. Mentors are comprised of practicing engineers from a wide spectrum of disciplines and industries for discussions in a “speed date” format with college and sometimes high school students. The goal is to have no more than five students are talking to a single Mentor at once, which on a busy night becomes almost a mini-presentation, with some individual questions being answered. Past mentor nights have had students rotate between mentor to mentor freely or have designated someone to prompt rotations every fifteen minutes over the course of two hours. There are no expectations to have an ongoing or follow-up mentoring relationship with any student unless both parties desire it.

Students can:

Meet professional engineers
Explore opportunities in engineering
Get advice from professionals
Learn more about employment in engineering

The events are coordinated between a representative from the college and a PSEC Mentor Night Volunteer Coordinator. The college organizes the room reservation, food, AV, signage, parking, and coordinates student attendance, and may also coordinate Mentor volunteers through their dean, faculty, alumni, and/or other external organizations that support the college’s efforts like PSEC. The PSEC Coordinator works with the college to determine the date, time & location of their event. They determine how many students are forecasted to attend, the number of Mentors needed, and which engineering disciplines are requested to best support a given event. The PSEC Mentor Night Coordinators work with the college to invite volunteers from last years event, and they send new volunteer requests to the PSEC member socities representatives to share the volunteer request with their memberships as applicable. PSEC Mentor Coordinators work with the college to help configure an online Mentor volunteer registration, and the event is displayed on the PSEC website and social media with the links to the volunteer registration included.

Current and Past Announcements for Mentor Night Events

Green River College – Mentor Night, April 12th, 2023 March 24, 2023
Hi Mentors, MESA and PSEC are hosting the next Science and Engineering Mentor Night at Green River College on April 12, from 5:30-8:30pm. We are hoping to recruit professional scientists, technologists, and engineers from a variety of backgrounds; would you be interested in participating and/or do you know anyone else that might be interested? If so, please sign up here or forward this link to interested colleagues: tinyurl.com/GRC-Mentor. GRC SCIENCE AND ...
Sign-up Highline College, Des Moines Mentor Night, April 20th, 2023 March 15, 2023
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfhiLVYF3We3-ksktF3ugHGEIqMZ8ATITAfH4-Tf1wdZ7aDMw/viewform?usp=sf_link Hi Mentors, On Thursday, April 20th, the Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) will be sponsoring a Mentor Night event at Highline College in Des Moines. We like having a good variety of engineering disciplines, ages and both female and male role models. We need all fields of engineering and science. All Puget Sound societies please forward this ...
UW Bothell Mentor Night – Feb 2, 2022 December 14, 2021
PSEC is sponsoring a engineering mentor night at UW Bothell on Februrary 2, 2022 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Anyone interested in participating as a mentor should sign up by December 31, 2021 here: https://forms.gle/kWcDNtgYU2nfs9Lo8
Mentor Night – April 29th, 2021 5p-7p: Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC) together with MESA / LSAMP at Seattle Central College April 7, 2021
Engineering Mentor Night gives students an opportunity to meet representatives from a wide spectrum of practices in the engineering profession. They learn about career paths in engineering, day-to-day work, internships, graduate education, professional advancement and more! No ongoing mentoring is expected of those attending this event. This is the student’s opportunity to learn, ask questions, and ...
UW-Bothell Mentor Night April 1, 2021 February 23, 2021
Join this event to share your expertise and experience with engineering students from the University of Washington Bothell. This one night commitment is intended for the mentor to share their learnings and advice. Please join us April 1st from 7 pm to 9 pm. The event will consist of a number of small group break ...
Engineering Mentor Night at SU | Student Center | Oct 14 Monday | 5-7pm September 10, 2019
When: Monday, October 14, 2019 – 5:00 PM -7:00PM, check-in at 4:30PM Where: Seattle University Student Center 160 (see map below) As part of Seattle University’s Engineering & Tech Takeover week, SME and PSEC have arranged a Mentor Night for students. Sign up to be a Mentor by clicking HERE
2019 Seattle University, PSEC Engineering Mentor Night April 4, 2019
SU Campion Ballroom When: Tuesday, May 14th, 2019, 6:00pm – 8:00pm Where: Campion Ballroom, Seattle University Mentor Registration Here Seattle University (SU) is hosting an engineering mentor night for their students on Tuesday, May 14th from 6 to 8 pm and they are particularly seeking mentors in Mechanical, Electrical, Computer and Civil Engineering. The event will be hosted in ...
Shoreline Mentor Night for February 6th, 2019 has been postponed February 6, 2019
The College is closed due to the weather so we are cancelling the Mentor Night scheduled for tonight. We will work with Shoreline College to reschedule for some time in March or April. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Highline Mentor Night Event, May 22nd May 9, 2018
Our friends at Highline College are hosting our latest (and last of the program year) Mentor Night. If you are an engineering student there it is a good way to meet and network with local engineers. If you are a local engineer the PSEC is always looking for volunteer mentors to spend an evening with the ...
Shoreline College Mentor Night March 17, 2018
Our friends at Shoreline Community College have announced their engineering Mentor Night will be held on April 25th at 5:30 to 8:00. If you would like to spend some time answering questions for some engineering students please consider registering on their eventbrite registration page.

Puget Sound Engineering Council