KFUPM Systems Engineering Club Adapts to Distance Education

The Systems Engineering Club (SEC) at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals continued to organize its activities during the second semester with the aim of developing students' capabilities by using the technical means available for distance education. The activities included organizing workshops, lectures and qualitative initiatives in which many students from various scientific disciplines participated.

From 9th to 11th April 2020, SEC organized the "Know Your Passion" initiative. The event aimed to explain to preparatory year, first year and high school students the advantages of each major offered at KFUPM and the fields of work it offered upon graduation.

According to the initiative, 21 majors in engineering, accounting and administrative fields were taught at the University. More than 3,000 students from different regions of the Kingdom participated in the initiative.

On Monday, 6th April 2020, SEC also organized an online lecture entitled "The Art of Decision Analysis", delivered by Mr Abdullah Al-Saeed, Vice President of Mozn Company and the Director General of the Intelligence Center.

The lecture aimed to help students to develop decision-making skills that they can use use in their working life. The lecture included an introduction on consultation, the Math Olympiad and an overview of the best universities. Mr. Al-Saeed shared his career experiences with the 270 students participating in the event and offered some important advice in the field of counselling to students.

On Tuesday, 7th April 2020, SEC organized an online workshop on the role of robotics and automation in developing business and industrial processes, which was delivered by Mr. Malik AbdulJabbar, business analyst at Deloitte Digital.

During the workshop, discussions involved the importance of automation and robotics in the industrial field, their role in various industrial environments, and how to develop the required skills in this field.

On Wednesday, 8th April 2020, the Club organized a digital Seminar entitled “The Future of Work”, delivered by Mrs Fadwa Al-Harqan, SAP Chief Digital Innovation Officer, KSA, Kuwait & Bahrain.

More than 130 students participated in the seminar. It highlighted the relationship between man and machine, technical development and its impact on creating new fields, providing job opportunities and the future vision of work fields.

SEC President, Mr Sultan Al-Aboudi said that the suspension of the official working hours in the universities due to the Corona pandemic was not an impediment to the continuation of the educational process at KFUPM nor to the organization of remote qualitative events using modern technical means.

He pointed out that the interaction of students and their participation in the events was significant and evidence of students' eagerness to benefit from the Club’s activities and to develop their skills.

He also pointed out that there was no difference in the numbers of participants in the digital activities when compared to the number of participants in the activities precedeeding the crisis which were held in the presence of students in the halls or laboratories.

Mr Al-Aboudi said, in addition to the mentioned activities, SEC organizes the weekly student consulting initiative for systems engineering students at all levels. The initiative aims to help students in their study plans, arrange their curriculum courses, provide consultations for various academic courses, and give a full explanation of their characteristics and the importance of each course and its association with other courses. The consultations process is provided by a group of final year students and those who had previously taken these courses, e.g., SEC organized digital auxiliary classes for SE 315 presented by Mr Faris Rumikhani.