Building Culture While Touring Chicago
Master of Engineering Management (MEM) students spent a day building community while seeing some of the city's most iconic sights.
Northwestern's Master of Engineering Management (MEM) program is designed for experienced STEM professionals who want to develop management and leadership skills. While course lessons and projects are critical to that process, so too are less formal opportunities that focus on cohort culture and provide opportunities to interact with one another outside the classroom.
More than 20 MEM students recently spent a Saturday together sightseeing in Chicago and touring some of the city's most famous destinations.
The group visited Chicago's iconic Navy Pier, which juts out into Lake Michigan and offers breathtaking views of both the water and the city skyline. Students rode the famous Centennial Ferris Wheel, which offers views of the city from nearly 200 feet in the air.
The students got a closer look at the city's skyscrapers on a sightseeing architecture tour, which took students on a boat ride through downtown on the Chicago river.
"Navy Pier gave us a fantastic view of Chicago, which is definitely worth seeing again," said Giorgi Gulabyan (MEM '22). "The river tour added more colors to the view from Navy Pier, and allowed us to see Chicago (in a new way)."
The students also visited Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, one of the largest science museums in the world. Included in the museum's collection is the U-505 submarine — the only German submarine in the US — as part of a national war memorial to American sailors.
"That was a rare opportunity to touch a real submarine," Gulabyan said.
Afterward, the group had dinner and gelato to cap off a day that started at 10 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m.
"Visiting those places as a team, having dinner and gelato, that was the most important part," Gulabyan said. "That joins us together and gives us a memory to remember."
That was the point of the trip, said Azgar Ali (MEM '22), who helped organize the day's itinerary. The sightseeing was fun, but the real opportunity was to get to know and interact with one another.
"The MEM program develops a collaborative culture in many different ways," Ali said. "These types of events strengthen relationships among the cohort and we carry it forward after graduation."
