Student debate series @ SMU Engineerng, and the need for community development inside the grad school

Lyle Engineering School at Southern Methodist University (SMU) hosted the very first (not entirely sure,,,but at least first debate series) event which utilizes the amphitheater right in front of their new Engineering building Caruth Hall.

Time magazine? No, this was the ad for this event.


http://www.smu.edu/Lyle/Undergrad/CEL/CELEvents/Debate.aspx

Debaters seating and the facade of Caruth Hall.

Audience.

The topic was questioning if the moratorium of oil spill is inapropriate or not. Two team consisting of two people (three of them are from engineering, one was from political science), not only their speech but also there was 30 miniutes long discussion from audience. The winner was chosen by vote and the advocating team (against my expectation) won, but I'm sure the result was very close.

Aside from the topic itself which was very fascinating to me, I was glad to know the university is actively providing the opportunities like this event where I am able to see how other students and researchers think and do research and I also can mingle with people in the departments who share the same/close area of interest. In my opinion, what makes the graduate school valuable to each individual is not the ranking/reputation of the school, not only the quality of coursework, but the community. People. In my speciality area (Systems Engineering), I've already been satisfied with the well experienced faculty and what&how they teach classes even though I've been here only 6 weeks so far. But what's still lacking is community especially in engineering and business in which I'm interested the most. So, other than my own effort to broaden the range of contacts, I strongly expect the school to provide more exciting opportunities like this time, which I believe so-called top level schools do.