President's Report - November 2010

My favorite SWE activity is Girl Scout Patch Day and it is new to me this year since participating in the Parents Track regarding possibilities for their daughters instead of working directly with the girl scouts on the experiments. Thank you to all the Outreach volunteers in October.

I have packed my bags and I am headed to the National Conference in Orlando! I look forward to a few days of professional development and networking. My contact and plans are posted on the Attendance List on the SWE Minnesota Community and there will be a SWE-MN dinner on Friday, so email me at president@swe-mn.org.

There are a lot of good activities planned for November and I hope to see you at one of them. I have attended a Dale Carnegie session before and am excited that they are tailoring a session for SWE on November 9th. I will get to meet new members on November 15th and hope that everyone has renewed their membership before December. Thank you for participating last month in our membership survey which is important to have the feedback to continue to provide relevant and valuable programming to our membership. If you have any other ideas or input not included in the survey response, please contact myself or any of the committee chairs.

Finally, the next Executive Council meeting is November 11th if you are interested in checking out the leadership operations.

During fall cleanup and winterization, I hope that you continue to read the weekly email and check out the calendar on the website to stay appraised of all the opportunities for programming, membership networking, and outreach activities.

- Angela

VP Article - November 2010

While volunteering at a recent Outreach event held at the girlsBest Convening in October, the SWE-MN group was asked by a young girl why a wage gap existed between male and female engineers. At first I was caught off guard but such a multifaceted question raised by a young girl and then secondly, I realized I didn’t have a good answer. In their recent report titled “Status of Women & Girls in Minnesota”, the University of MN Humphrey Institute’s Center on Women & Public Policy, in partnership with the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota address this important issue.

In today’s world, women make up the majority of MN’s workforce. According to the report, 40% of MN mothers are the primary breadwinners of their household. We know that many of these women have bachelor’s, master’s, and other post-secondary degrees, but despite their education, women earn on average no more than $0.76 on the dollar compared to men in MN. The report goes into detail the wage gap difference between different races, rural vs. urban areas, and between occupations. The report states that in the architecture and engineering occupations, women are earning 89% of what men earn in the same occupations.

Why is this the case?

There are several theories of why the wage gap still exists today when women have made so many advances toward equality.

Here’s what some say:
-Women are more relationship focused and not driven or motivated by a higher paycheck
-Women tend to take time off of work in order to have children and help raise a family
-Women are not as good as negotiation as men.

And others say they just don’t know why. I found this report to be very educational and helpful in better understanding my place as a female engineer in the workplace and I encourage you to spend some time reading it as well. Hopefully, the next time I am asked why there is a wage gap in the engineering profession; I will be able to say that one doesn’t exist.

The full report can be downloaded from the Women’s Foundation of MN website here.

- Lesley

Outreach - Recap and Upcoming Events - November 2010

Girls BEST Recap

On Saturday October 9th, a group of SWE-MN volunteers spoke to a group of young women at the annual girls BEST Convening held at Dunwoody College in Minneapolis. Girls BEST (girls Building Economic Success Together) is a fund of the Women’s Foundation of MN which is focused on grant making to girl led/driven programs which serve under served/under represented girls ages 10-18 throughout MN.

The SWE-MN Outreach group spent some time introducing the girls to engineering by telling them what we do as engineers, sharing with them what kind of education is required to be an engineer, and expanding on the reasons why someone would want to be an engineer. We had a lot of great conversation and were able to get in a lot of question and answer time.

After our presentation, we divided the girls into teams and participated in a communication activity involving Lego’s. Each girl had an assigned role of a customer, a builder, or a designer. The objective of the activity was to have the builder correctly build a Lego structure with only verbal instructions from the designers. The designers were only given verbal instructions from the customer who was in charge of the final product. Only 2 out of 8 teams were successful on the 1st try. Afterwards, we had a discussion with the girls on what worked and what didn’t and why communication and teamwork was so important.

~Sara, Lesley, Kalyani, Amy, Cassie~

GSPD Recap 

This year’s Girl Scout Patch Day was excellent! On Saturday October 30th we hosted 130 Girl Scouts, along with their parents and troop leaders for Zoom! Into Engineering!
This year we had over 35 volunteers help in preparation, set-up and execution of the event! We could not have done this event with all of wonderful volunteers. THANK YOU! 

Special thanks to Boston Scientific for providing the funding for this great event for the 8th year in a row!

Silly Putty: Girl Scouts were able to combine household ingredients (Borax, water, glue, and food coloring) to turn molecules into polymers! The elastic properties of the silly putty showed the girls that when certain substances are combined (in a specific order), a change occurs and a product is yielded. The girls made their putty in a variety of beautiful shades; as they explored the material properties of the putty, they compared their creation to properties of commercial silly putty.
Bug Circuits: Circuit Bugs are simple little electro-mechanical insects that respond to movement, wind, and vibrations by blinking their LED (light-emitting diode) eyes. This experiment allowed the girls to bring out their creative sides. They first designed a bug with pipe cleaners; then it was on to the engineering! They created a circuit with a coin-cell battery, copper tubing, music wire and colored LEDS. They then attached the circuit on their bugs and learned that when the circuit was closed, the eyes lit up!
Egg Mobile: In the Egg Mobile car design activity, girl’s experienced working in a team to solve an automotive engineering design problem. Each team designed a vehicle to transport a raw egg to safety in both a speed challenge and a downhill crash test! This challenge involved budgeting, material selection, design, safety and teamwork to bring the team to victory. Fun was had by all as the cars raced and, luckily for the cleanup, only one or two eggs were broken!
Oil Spill: In light of the recent Gulf oil spill, the girls each created a mini oil spill of their own to develop greater understanding of the challenges posed by oil cleanup and risks to our environment. They investigated clean-up and containment options like environmental engineers through trial with several different materials. They also learned the difficulty of cleaning oil from wildlife by cleaning off a feather - the only successful way was to wash the feathers with soapy water!
Parents’ Track: In addition to teaching 130 Girl Scouts about engineering, SWE-MN also reached out to over 40 parents! A parent session was held at the event and led by SWE-MN volunteers. The parents were introduced to the World of STEM and challenged to go beyond GSPD and do more! Parents were told that SWE can be a resource at any age group and encourage them to get involved. This year, we also hosted a college admissions panel to start exposing parents to the joys and challenges of choosing the right school. The parents then got to do a little engineering on their own! They made lip gloss and were given the recipe to do with their girls at a future troop meeting. The parents left the session with a better understanding of how to reach out to their own kids and most importantly why it is important to promote Women in Engineering!

Professional Development Recap and Future Events - November 2010

Creating Connections in 2011 and Why It's Critical
Presented by Dale Carnegie

Dinner and beverages provided by SWE. Please come a couple minutes early to eat dinner and find a seat. The speaker will begin at 6pm.

SWE-MN Members are being offered this event a week before it is opened up to the other engineering societies. If interested please use this priority deadline to your advantage and RSVP early, as there are only 40 seats available.

Description: The current condition of the industry causes many of us to over-focus on short term challenges, making it more difficult to see opportunities for connections- both personal and professional. It is vital that our ATTITUDE and behaviors maximize the potential that exists today and position us for future personal and professional growth. Regardless if you are a business leader, manager or in transition, this session will provide specific and applicable concepts to enhance our ability to:

1. Focus on the areas that will maximize our ATTITUDE and our personal results
2. Learn a tool to sustain and manage internal & external relationships (and why they are so critical!)
3. Create strategic and realistic goals that help keep us accountable!

Professional Development Committee Meeting

 

PD Committee Meeting - Come and join PD to help plan future events especially for our signature event- the Professional Development Spring Seminar! Attendees can order dinner at 6pm and the meeting will start shortly after.   

Jacalyn or Katrina at pd@swe-mn.org with any questions

Section Representatives - November 2010

Region H Conference – Mark Your Calendars!

The University of Michigan – Ann Arbor collegiate section is working on fund raising and beginning to plan the logistics for the conference. Mark your calendars and stay tuned for additional details.

WE10 The Annual Conference for Women Engineers – November 4-6

WE10 is the largest and most comprehensive gathering of forward-thinking women engineers and technologists. Adding to the already high energy of WE10, the culmination of the yearlong SWE60 Anniversary Celebration will provide inspiration and spike enthusiasm. Throughout the conference participants will experience numerous career-shaping opportunities, as well as draw from the energy of SWE’s strong past and promising future to launch innovation and define success.

If you are planning on attending the Annual Conference, then be sure to logon to the Minnesota Section Community and update the Annual Conference Attendance List. This list will enable you to coordinate with other SWE-MN members who are going to the conference. A great event that SWE-MN plans for every Annual Conference is a networking dinner for SWE-MN members. You can sign up for this dinner by indicating your interest in the Annual Conference Attendance List. We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!

If you are attending WE10, take note of the following meetings:
• Region H Meeting, Thursday 11/4, 1PM Professional, 2PM Joint
• Membership Meeting, Saturday 11/6, 10AM
• Town Hall Meeting, Saturday 11/6, 11AM

Can’t physically make it to Orlando this year?

A new way to experience WE10 has arrived! During this year’s Annual Conference, major conference highlights will stream live to your computer, including the highly-anticipated WE10 keynote, four plenary sessions, and a number of other conference sessions. In addition to streaming live via video during the conference, keynote and plenary sessions will also be recorded for future replay. Free to full-conference registrants of WE10, Virtual Participation is also being offered as separate registration option.

Region H Fall Caucus Meeting - RECAP

The Region H fall caucus meeting was held on Saturday, September 25th just outside of Chicago in Rolling Meadows, IL. The Chicago Regional Section in conjunction with Northrop Grumman hosted the meeting. The purpose of this face-to-face meeting was to allow our Section leaders to interact with the Region leadership in preparation for the National Conference. Section Representative Kalyani Mallela attended the meeting as a representative for SWE-MN. The focus of the caucus was on Region H business and training. The day started with a quick overview of SWE, including changes to the Board of Directors, Region structure, and a financial report. The morning progressed with a presentation of the current SWE Strategic Plan. A copy of the document is available to all members on SWE Communities under the Resources portion of the Governance Documents Community. After lunch a sharing session of the Region’s Best Practices took place, as well as discussions about Outreach, Membership, and Fund Development. The topic of Region Boundaries and Strategic Outlook was again put on the table and it was decided that a task force is needed to review and address the various concerns members have. Overall, the meeting was considered a very productive and successful gathering of Region H leadership!

Membership Events - November 2010

New Member and Grad Upgrade Event
SWE-MN is hosting a yummy dessert night for new members, and soon-to-be new members!  If you are new to SWE-MN, or will be graduating in December and would like to join SWE-MN, please join us for cheesecake and mingling at the Cheesecake Factory in Edina.

Note: The first 5 graduating seniors to RSVP will receive a free upgrade to Professional Membership courtesy of SWE-MN!!  (December graduates only at this time.)

RSVP: E-mail Nicole Danielson-Bartelt or Lynn Davenport at membership@swe-mn.org by November 8, 2010 if you would like to attend. Please note if you are a new member, or soon-to-be graduate in your response.

SWE-MN Volunteer Event
SWE-MN is getting in the holiday spirit by volunteering at Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) on Thursday, December 9th. If you've never been, it is a very rewarding experience (and very easy). You spend about 1.5 hours packaging food packets to go around the world to needy children. See details below. We have committed to 15 volunteers, so please come join us!! Kids are welcome to volunteer too, see the FMSC website for more details: http://www.fmsc.org/

Questions: E-mail membership@swe-mn.org