All of us have received well wishes throughout our life for various special occasions.”May all your dreams come true” is one of the most popular greetings of all time. As the French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said: “A dream without a plan is just a wish”. Thus, receiving hundreds of well-wishes or praying to God is not going to “make your dreams come true” unless you know your game. Pursuing higher education and/or a well-paid career is indeed a “dream” of all the graduates. With the aim of playing our role in contributing to the planning and preparation for those dreams, the Statistics Society of Department of Statistics in the University of Sri Jayewardenepura held an online panel discussion and a Q&A session themed “Higher Education to Build a Brighter Career” from 9.30 AM onwards on Sunday, the 31st of May 2020.
The live session was graced virtually by five panelists from academia as well as industry. The first panelist was our very own, Dr. Rajitha Silva who is a Ph.D. holder from Simon Fraser University, Canada, and a Senior Lecturer of the Department of Statistics, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Despite the differences of time zones Dr. Harsha Perera, who is a Faculty member as well as a Ph.D. holder from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada joined us as another panelist from academia. Dr. D. K. Karunaratne, who is a Ph.D. holder from the University of South Florida, USA, and an individual contributor in Intel Corporation also joined us all the way from the USA. Another panelist who has had a sound exposure to the industry as an R&D Engineer in Singapore and France, Mr. Lasith Haputhanthri also joined us all the way from Canada. He is a Master holder of the National University of Singapore and currently works as a Software Engineer for Amazon. Last but not least, our final panelist was yet another individual with significant industrial exposure in Sri Lanka as well as abroad, Mr. Praneeth Weerasekara who is a Master Holder in Nanotechnology and currently works for Twinery in Sri Lanka.
The panel discussion had 65 active participants who were either students or graduates from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and other Universities coming from various study areas in STEM. Even Though the panel discussion was organized in such short notice, we were truly astonished by the number of participants from all over Sri Lanka.
We are humbled to say that we had quite an interactive as well as informative 2 hour-long session. Firstly, we discussed different stages of the application process for graduate studies in Sri Lanka as well as abroad. Every panelist added information and opinions from their perspective. A few of the students raised questions relating to that matter and the session turned out to be a very friendly casual discussion without even realizing it. Some conflicts of ideas and misconceptions of our students were smoothly and effectively clarified by the panelists. They elaborated more about different fields of study which would lead to prosperous career paths through the eyes of both academia and industry. Moreover, we discussed different aspects to consider when pursuing graduate studies abroad such as scholarships, financial situation, moving with dependents, pathways to obtaining permanent residency (PR) which eventually lead to obtaining citizenship, applying for vacancies after graduate studies and many more timely topics beneficial for our students to plan ahead. Panelists were humble enough to share their personal experiences of the mistakes they made along the way and how they overcame them. I am pretty sure it made a huge impact on fellow students including me.
We said our goodbyes after a successful online panel discussion and Q&A session. For the formalities, we distributed a feedback form among the participants and were truly astonished by the positive feedback and constructive criticism directed by them. Each and every feedback exemplified that the effort and time we put together were not in vain and gave us immense self-satisfaction for initiating this event as the Statistics Society of Department of Statistics at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.
As the co-organizers of the event, I (Ms. Uthmani Ambawattage) and my fellow batchmate Ms. Kalpani Perera had quite a hustle in promoting the event, structuring questions to be discussed covering all areas of interest, responding to potential participants and collecting their own questions to be added, formally keeping in touch with panelists and participants through email and many more. Our team spirit and fulfilling shared responsibilities effectively made the organizing process less stressful for both of us. It was truly a privilege to work with Ms. Kalpani Perera as co-organizers of the event. We must remind our beloved Faculty member Dr. Rajitha Silva who is also the Senior Treasurer of the Statistics Society with gratitude for being the most supportive and friendly mentor he was. His guidance and volunteering to take the responsibility of communicating with the other panelists indeed made it possible to organize this timely event in such a short period of time. Last but not least, Mr. Janith Wanniarachchi who contributed as the presenter of the session.
On behalf of the Statistics Society, I thank all the participants and well wishes for reminding us about the importance of organizing such events as a student-lead society. We hope we did our part in making your “dreams” come true.
Written by :Uthmani Ambawattage,
Co-organizer
Panel Discussion and Q&A Session on “ Higher Education to Build a Brighter Career”
Important Links :
Feedback from the participants
Report on the composition of participants
Facebook page of the Statistics Society
The upcoming Final Examinations of the Faculty of Applied Sciences will be held virtually for the General and Special degree students. As the Department of Statistics, we require the students to adhere to some general instructions.
