Skule™ alumni volunteer Ernesto Diaz Lozano Patiño helps engineering students turn challenges into opportunities.
By Christine Ward
When Ernesto Diaz Lozano Patiño (CivE 1T5+PEY, MASc 1T8) first joined U of T Engineering, he had no idea how important the community would become to him — and it easily could have gone the other way.
Back in 2011, Diaz Lozano Patiño was looking for adventure. His decision to accept an entrance scholarship from U of T Engineering and move to Toronto from his native Mexico City was done almost on a whim.
“I figured I’d try my luck and see how it goes,” he says.
Luck wasn’t exactly on his side. Within days of arriving, Diaz Lozano Patiño broke his jaw trying out for the engineering intramural soccer team and had to have it wired shut for seven weeks. The normally upbeat, outgoing teen was left feeling lonely and angry — and regretting his choice to move so far from family and friends.
It took until the start of his second year for him to see that the glass really was half full.
“I realized I wasn’t balancing things properly, that there was a lot of amazing stuff happening, I just hadn’t leveraged it,” he says. Before he knew it, challenges became opportunities and he recognized that this was his chance to speak up and help solve them.
Diaz Lozano Patiño threw himself into his Skule™ experience, joining the Engineering Society as a civil engineering representative and rising to the role of President by his fourth year.
Among many accomplishments with his EngSoc team, he established a new student mental health director role, lobbied for the introduction of mid-term course evaluations and finalized an agreement with the University of Toronto Students’ Union that netted EngSoc an extra $90,000 a year for student services, clubs and conferences.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” he laughs. “I went from lonely and angry to loving it!”
Five years after graduating, Diaz Lozano Patiño now works as a Sustainability Consultant at IBI Group in Toronto. But he’s still finding ways to continue to give back to U of T Engineering through volunteerism.
Last summer, Diaz Lozano Patiño was chosen as the Engineering representative of the U of T’s College of Electors, an alumni governing body responsible for electing the University’s Chancellor and alumni members of the Governing Council.
He has also joined the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering’s recruitment team on several trips to Mexico, helping to promote the school to prospective international students and their parents, including the graduating class at his former high school.
And he recently took on what he hopes will be his most impactful role yet — establishing a graduating class scholarship to help the next generation of engineers get through the rough patches.
“One way or another, we all had help as students and it’s our duty as young professionals to start giving back,” he says.
Diaz Lozano Patiño, along with 15 of his classmates from civil and mineral engineering, is reaching out to their other Skulemates to encourage them to contribute to their class gift, as well as attend the virtual alumni reunion (home edition) events this June.
“Our class is our strongest network,” he says. “It would be a pity to lose that human capital just because we didn’t step up to it.”
To learn more about the Faculty’s Alumni Reunion activities or make your gift to the Class of 1T5 Scholarship, contact Sonia De Buglio, Director of Alumni Relations at Sonia.debuglio@utoronto.ca.