President's Report - February/March 2011

Along with 14 Minnesota professional members I attended the Region H conference at University of Michigan entitled Going Green which was personally rewarding as in my career I have taken on the role to define sustain ability in manufacturing my product line. At conference Minnesota agreed to host the Region meeting HART for FY12. The weekend was crammed full of dynamic professional development sessions and meeting up with SWE friends near and far as well as the many collegiates. I am looking forward to bringing some great speakers together to select from for our local Professional Development Spring Seminar. I hope all members will take advantage of this opportunity to register for March 12th. I also want to thank Katrina Sanders and Jacalyn St. Dennis who are working very many hours to pull together this event.

So far this year I have been given the fortune to meet with a few companies regarding how we can partner for programming. The Women in Nuclear event at Par Nuclear was a success as a very informative evening on February 10th. Be on the look out for future new partners. Also thank you to Melissa Kaufman who led a successful local SWE-MN fundraising event well attended on January 21st to ensure the future ability to continue to provide the level of programming that our membership has come to expect.

Now I am looking forward to kicking off Engineers week February 20-27 so consider coming out as a volunteer to Spark Slime Speed or Techfest or to bring a child. A thought to share from the exceptional Keynote at region conference was a challenge to us all to introduce someone to engineering and I think our SWE-MN Outreach programming is one option to meet that goal thanks to Lesley, Rachel, Amanda, and Sara.

Lastly to share with you some state of business, we are short on members to maintain our three person section representation so please encourage others to join SWE as members before the end of March. Elections are also coming up. SWE-MN has appointed the nominating committee of Nicole Danielson-Bartlet, Elizabeth Bierman, and Holli Pheil so speak with them or Lesley Wyckoff and myself if you are interested in an officer position. Also in the past, Minnesota has been under represented in ballot submissions. We have three elections as members privileged to vote in: local Minnesota, region H, and national Board. I strongly urge you all to get out and vote for National and Region contested elections especially since from Minnesota there are some familiar candidates like Alyse Stofer, Elizabeth Bierman, Holli Pheil, and Lindsey Roberts McKenzie.

In close thank you to the chairs and committees for your continued energy,
Angela

President's Report - January/February 2011

At the 2010 National Conference, the Region awarded Minnesota the Continuous Improvement award for our Fund Development program and I look forward to continuing the momentum this year with our Winter Fundraiser and Silent Auction on Friday January 21st. Please consider joining with other members at Spill the Wine in Minneapolis for an evening of eats, wine tasting, and donation towards our SWE-MN programs. Here is some more information about this event.

Reflecting the past half of the fiscal year I am proud of the leadership team in their efforts. The section was recognized for its work last fiscal year with the awards presented at the National Conference. With New Year’s resolutions on the mind also come SWE-MN nominations. On January 8th there will be a Leadership Coaching session at 10:30am at SEH in Vadnais Heights. Let me know at president@swe-mn.org if you would like to join us for this hour with Cathy Krier as we learn about membership strategies. Thank you to everyone for renewing your membership by December and continuing your participation with the society. If you want to become involved next fiscal year starting in July on the executive board please start to talk to the current officers and committee chairs about their positions. Before the Spring Seminar we will be looking for officer nominations and committee chairs following. Lesley and I would welcome the opportunity to chat with you on how you would like to contribute to the society leadership.

There are many more exciting programs planned for the next half of the fiscal year. After our membership fundraiser in January, there is Engineers Week in February. The Outreach committee has many events planned for volunteers to maximize the community impact on teaching about engineering during this national recognition week, but volunteer assistance is needed to complete this undertaking. The highlight of March to me is the annual Professional Development Spring Seminar. There is a stimulating line up of sessions being pulled together by the committee for Saturday, March 12th at Honeywell. Throughout the remainder of this coming year there will be many more Professional Development and Membership programs publicized in the weekly emails and on our website, so read the emails or check out the monthly calendar on the web http://www.swe-mn.org/.

I hope that you have all enjoyed the holidays with some rest and fun with friends and family. Welcome to 2011 where I expect you can continue to see dynamic programming from our section to participate in.

Happy New Year to You,

Angela

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

President's Message - September 2010

On August 30^th I appreciated the opportunity to kick off the year at our annual Open House event graciously sponsored by Boston Scientific. I met some new-to-me members and networked to share ideas and discuss the goals for the year. The EC received section goals to execute against for the year and we will be reviewing at the EC meeting on September 13^th. If any member is interested in getting involved in the EC, please contact me this year as I extend an invitation to join us at an EC meeting to see the efficient and fun section operations.

Thanks to the EC efforts, there were informative booths at the Open House for each committee so I hope you will check out the newsletter and website for upcoming dates if you missed that opportunity to attend or did not grab a flier that night to learn where to get involved in professional development, fund development, outreach, and membership.

SWE National Conference is coming up the first week of November. Posted out the SWE Communities> Minnesota Section is a collaborative document to register with SWE-MN your attendance. Check out this document to search for a roommate and to sign up interest in attending a dinner with other SWE-MN members. I intend to plan a dinner, currently targeting Friday night, for us to get together and share our insights regarding the conference since we can’t humanly get to every opportunity. I also encourage you to consider attending the Celebrate SWE! ticket event for Saturday night when completing your conference registration at we10.swe.org. Hope to see you in Orlando!

With the passing of the Minnesota State Fair, yielding for yellow school buses, and the long Labor Day weekend behind me, I realize that fall has arrived and I am filling in my calendar with SWE dates to keep active this autumn after the enjoyable summer. Please contact me to share any of your ideas or goals for SWE-MN at president@swe-mn.org.

President's Welcome - August 2010

Welcome to Fiscal Year 2011 (FY11)! Last week the Executive Council (EC) met for our Annual Summer Planning Meeting to set goals and direction for the upcoming year. It was a very productive meeting where we talked about programming for the year and brainstormed our annual fund development event. I would like to formally introduce you to our new Fund Development chair, and new to the EC, Melissa Kaufmann, as well as the two new Outreach co-chairs Rachel Borchers and Amanda Porter joining the EC. The Professional Development committee will continue under the direction of Katrina Sanders and Jacalyn St. Dennis as will our Scholarship program led by Naomi Brill and Holly Kimball. The SWE Counselors to the Minnesota schools with SWE student sections will persevere on under the advisement of myself, Martha Escobar, Charlene Willenbring, and Melissa Stiegler. We are well represented to voice our opinions to the society with returning Section Representatives Charlene Willenbring and Lindsey Roberts McKenzie who will be joined by Kalyani Mallela who was the Outreach Co-Chair last year.

With the beginning of a new year, it is time to renew your membership so I encourage you to visit www.swe-mn.org member services to stay involved with the activities planned by our new Membership co-chairs Lynn Davenport and Nicole Danielson-Bartelt, also both new to the EC. It is very rewarding to have new members on the EC with fresh ideas. And I still would like to have more people involved in the section, so I invite you to attend our Open House and sign up for the professional development or outreach committee. Even if you can help out with one event to sign people in at a program you are already planning on attending or spending a couple hours volunteering at an outreach event, we would all greatly appreciate the participation. There are other opportunities for personal contributions like judging scholarship applications or writing up speaker bios for the professional development spring seminar. So come to the Open House to check out what is in store for the year and to mark your calendars for all the programming you don’t want to miss.

To stay up to date with the section, you will continue to receive weekly SWE-MN emails from our Secretary Laura Copp and Roz Johnson, the Newsletter editor, is still compiling these now monthly html newsletters along with Senja Lopac, the Webmaster, who manages our www.swe-mn.org website. There is a calendar on our website with the dates of all of the committee activities. Some summer highlights since the last communication include our section submitting ten National Awards packets that we will learn if we won any at the Celebrate SWE! event during the annual SWE National Conference in Orlando the first week of November (registration open at we10.swe.org). The Section Representatives also applied for nine section or individual awards to be distributed from our Region H leadership. Cassie Svendsen is the current Awards chair you will hear from if interested in submitting for the SWE National and some local individual awards.

Finally, at the summer planning meeting the EC also approved the FY11 budget that the committee led by new Treasurer Melissa Stiegler compiled. Lesley Wyckoff, the Vice President, and I will be meeting the rest of this month to finalize the tactical plan for the section as well as taking some personal time to enjoy the last few weeks of summer before we get really involved with all the exciting SWE programming Minnesota has to offer.

- Angela

President's Report - June 2010

Incoming President’s Appreciation

I have been really excited with anticipation in the last month since being elected the FY11 President. For me, June will bring transition from the former EC (Executive Council), budget planning, and completing all the award submissions for our section. Officially the new EC is instated July and that is when the new officers and chairs will all be getting together to plan the upcoming year. Thank you to the Lisa for her leadership this past year and to the whole section for the fantastic programs that I will enjoy reviewing in the award applications. Over the past eight years, since joining the Minnesota section, there have been tremendous events that have kept me involved and great leaders who have mentored me as I look forward to the privilege to continue to serve the section.

On June 7th the section will celebrate the accomplishments of our members at the annual Awards Ceremony. We can’t say thank you enough to the volunteers and sponsors, but this is one of my favorite events to reflect back on the year with appreciation. I will be at the June 17th picnic and hope to meet you there if I haven’t had the chance to talk to you yet and hear your thoughts about our section.

Contact me (alneidermire@yahoo.com) or Lesley (lawyckoff@gmail.com) if you already know that you would like to get involved and thank you to all the members who have agreed to serve on the FY11 Executive Council. Enjoy your summers everyone, rest up, have fun, and plan on attending a SWE event in the fall.

- Angela

Farewell from our FY10 President - Lisa Schmalhurst

Hi there everyone.
This is my last newsletter article to write as your president. *sniff*

I want to start by thanking you all for the honor of representing you this year. It has been at times a humbling experience to try to understand and fully appreciate all that this section does throughout the year. This year has been a challenge for SWE-MN – one that was met with strength and resilience by our executive council. Whenever we were down in volunteer or attendee numbers, these ladies stepped up efforts to insure that our activities were not only impactful and a success, but also aligned with the goals of the section and the Society. I know at times these ladies were discouraged by the effects of the economy on our operations, but as the song goes, they “[got] knocked down, but [they got] up again. You’re never gonna keep [them] down”. I thank each one of them individually for sharing their dedication, intellect and talents with SWE-MN. Thank you, Cassie, Laura, Adrienne, Lindsey, Jenna, Charlene, Lesley, Kalyani, Sara, Katrina, Jacalyn, Swati, Holli, Roz, Melissa R, Senja, Holly, Naomi, Angela, Janette, Melissa S, Martha and Nicki.

We’ve had a number of successful new starts this year. I want to take just a moment to recognize a couple of them. Most obvious among them is the change to the format of this communication. The impact that this has had is notable. Feedback from senior management within my company, Boston Scientific, ranged from “Looks awesome” to “HTML is the way to go”. This change improves our credibility with our members, current and potential sponsors. Moving to a monthly format also allows improved visibility for our events and the ability to include other news, articles and information of interest to our memebrs. Many thanks go out to Senja Lopac, Melissa Rhodes and Rozaane Johnson for the parts that they each played in helping this to come to fruition. I’d also like to recognize Sara Beck for the breakthroughs that she had in publishing and executing our Fund Development strategy this year. Last year’s chair had begun this work and Sara picked it up and ran. We now have a documented and published corporate sponsorship policy with funding tiers and entitlements. Disbursement of this policy this year resulted in the generous gift by Xcel Energy that enabled our spring Wow! That’s engineering event to be so well-attended by underprivileged girls. Sara is currently drafting a member sponsorship package and an example set of funding breakdowns to further help this effort succeed and support SWE-MN activities.

I know that Angela will lead FY11’s executive council to accomplish more great things in the year ahead. I could close with a “Farewell”, but that doesn’t seem to me to be in the right spirit for the time, so I’ll end with “Cheers!” in celebration of all that we have accomplished.

lisa

President's Report - May 2010

Hello SWE-MN!

Welcome to our new and improved HTML-enabled newsletter! Many thanks go to our webmaster, Senja Lopac, and newsletter editors, Rozaane Johnson and Melissa Rhodes, for the hard work put into making this a reality. We hope that you enjoy our new format and we welcome your feedback!
As I start to reflect as the end of the fiscal year draws near, I find that there is still so much happening in SWE-MN this year. The Wow! That’s Engineering event sponsored by Xcel Energy and our first annual Holiday Auction was a great success this past month. We still have many great upcoming networking and outreach events – check out our calendar at here. I’m so proud of everything that our section is achieving this year and I look forward to everything to come. You will notice our FY11 leadership begin to transition into the SWE-MN workings in the near future and I am so excited to see what new directions the section charts.

Until next month!
lisa

President's Report - April 2010

Hello SWE-MN!

Welcome to spring! This is an exciting time for SWE-MN. We had a very successful Professional Development Spring Seminar at St Thomas on March 13th. I’d like to offer my personal thanks to our Professional Development chairs Jacalyn St Dennis and Katrina Sanders for their hard work in bringing this event together. We have an exciting Wow! That’s Engineering outreach event coming up with Girls Inc on April 24th in St Paul. If you would like to volunteer to help with this event, please contact Sara at volunteer@swe-mn.org. Another thing that I’m excited about is the announcement of our FY10 slate of leaders for SWE-MN. These are eminently qualified and responsible women, who I am proud to have as the future of the section. I encourage you to read through the biographies of the ladies later in this newsletter. Watch for voting to begin in early April! Finally, I want to send a work of good luck to our SWE individual award applicants for the year as applications were turned in by March 31st. Enjoy the spring and

I hope to see you at one of our upcoming events!

Cheers, Lisa