2020 Graduate Student Teaching Award Recipient: Carolina Quiroz Juarez
Carolina Quiroz Juarez, from Mexico, is one of the Faculty of Graduate Research and Studies, Teaching Assistant Award recipients for 2020. She is pursuing her MSc in Software and Intelligent Systems Engineering.
Why did you choose this area of study?
When I reached that age, when any teenager has to decide what is going to do with her entire life, I just followed what I had done up to that moment that was computer engineering. After two years in my bachelor's degree, I found the importance of electrical engineering for the economic development of any country and decided to dedicate my professional life to it and switched majors. Amusingly enough, my MSc now is on electrical and computer engineering.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Contributing both in the capacity of a part-time lecturer while at the same time performing applied field research within my area of expertise in the industrial realm, perhaps at a fast pace dynamic environment such as a medium to small-sized company. I truly believe there are many areas of improvement within the electrical industry combined with new technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Who are three of your heroes (living or historical), and why?
All women on my mother's side taught me the meaning of resilience and working hard to reach my goals. They are strong women whose thoughts are coherent with their words (what they say) and with their acts (what they do), something that I try to honour in my life. Particularly my grandmother, a woman with profound practical wisdom and the gift of strengthening and building community.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue
Competitiveness. I think that progress and development (in all dimensions) for humans in a community come along with the contribution of all individuals being part of it, which implies sharing and learning together. In my opinion, competition among peers encourages selfishness and does not allow individuals to develop a feeling of belonging to a community. A supportive environment refocuses valuable energy into finding solutions to the problem at hand, so people do not have to dedicate valuable time to stand out.
Name a book that you would assign as recommended reading to students? 
"To have or to be," Erich Fromm. In my opinion, this book helps to reflect on our decisions sometimes misguided by external influences as buying things to be someone, or perhaps that our value depends upon the expensive things we wear and we use. From my perspective, this is an important discussion within, and among ourselves, this is the base of the problems we are facing in terms of environmental and economic crises. Our generations are facing a more extreme crisis than any other in modern times, and reconvening to preserve our societies is unavoidable.
I am passionate about my country, its history and its culture. This is a photo of the world heritage site, Saint Francis missionary convent, built between 1760 and 1768 in the federal state called Queretaro, 4 hours from Mexico City.
What skill would you consider to be most essential for humanity?
Empathy at its core is systemic thinking, an integration of all individuals in a society, and the acknowledgement of interdependence among them. In my opinion, we tend to forget that technological development has meaning only in the context of social development.
Who or what on campus has made an impact on your UAlberta success?
The multicultural environment in the university has helped me out to discover, for instance, different perspectives about the potential solutions to a problem. It has let me reflect on things I thought were facts in my culture and to put in perspective that many things are relative. For sure, knowing people from different cultures around the world has enriched my professional and personal life.