News & Events

Apply NOW for Dallas SWE Scholarships!

by Dallas SWE on in Announcements, Outreach
ScholarshipFlyerDallas SWE encourages young women to pursue mathematics, sciences and engineering programs and get engaged early in technical fields. To recognize women early on and motivate them to stay and continually learn, Dallas SWE offers scholarships and certificates.

Applications are now being accepted for the Society of Women Engineers Certificate and Scholarship programs. Some of the program highlights are below. We encourage you to visit our Scholarship website at www.dallaswe.org/scholarships for detailed information about and application forms for scholarships and certificates. There are several major updates to this year’s programs, so please read the instructions carefully!

One type of scholarship is awarded to graduating female high school seniors who will be majoring in engineering, based on academic excellence and need. A new scholarship type for this year, the Annie Colaco Scholarship, was funded through a generous donation during North Texas Giving Day and recognizes engineering students who have shown significant involvement and leadership in their collegiate SWE sections. Applications for both of these scholarship are due by April 15th. 

Certificates are awarded to students who excel in science and mathematics with distinction or for an engineering related activity, such as a science fair project or a technical paper competition. Nominated students also should be active citizens in their school and community. We hope that this program will encourage the recipients to consider a future engineering career.

Please share this information with your students and educators through the information letter and flyer. For additional information, please send an email to dallas.swe@gmail.com.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to recognizing your talented students!

SWE Member Appreciation: 45 Years Movie Screening

by Dallas SWE on in Membership Appreciation

In our January email, you may have seen a special offer from Sundance Selects available only to Dallas SWE members: a raffle drawing for two tickets to a screening of the movie 45 Years. Thanks to everyone who signed up to be a part of the raffle drawing. The winner was Dallas SWE member Amber Scheurer! Here’s what she had to say about the film:

I enjoyed seeing 45 Years. It was a very subtle yet emotional film about relationships and aging. Charlotte Rampling gave a great performance and definitely deserves her Oscar nomination for best actress. I set a goal to see all 8 of the Oscar Best Picture nominees, but I have also tried to make time to see some of the other movies nominated this season. I might have missed this one if not for Sundance Selects, thanks for the free tickets!

-Amber Scheurer

Stay tuned for more opportunities like this one, available only to our Dallas SWE members!

Reminder: She Networks, She Wins at SMU

by Dallas SWE on in Collegiate, Meetings

 

SNSW Save the Date-2

Don’t forget, our monthly meeting in February will be the annual She Networks, She Wins event at SMU!

This is SMU SWE’s biggest event with alumni, students and corporate sponsors getting together to network for the night. There will be a panel discussion to start off the event focusing on the book The Defining Decade. The conversation will be geared towards important events and defining milestones of early adulthood. Heavy hors d’oeuvres will be served and parking is available in Binkley parking garage for $1/hour.

RSVP here!

When: Tuesday, February 23, 2016, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Where: SMU, Lyle School of Engineering, 3145 Dyer St, Dallas Tx, 75225
Caruth Hall (4th Floor, Palmer Conference Center)
Parking Map: Binkley parking garage is building #63 on the map and the event is in building #52
Cost: Free!

 

 

Event Recap: FY16 SWE Region C Conference

by Dallas SWE on in Special Events

Last weekend, over 200 SWE members from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi met in Rogers, Arkansas for the FY16 Region C Conference hosted by the University of Arkansas SWE section. It was an exciting weekend of learning, networking, mentoring, and celebration! Fourteen Dallas SWE members attended the event and represented our section in various levels of SWE leadership!

Professional Development Sessionsammorgan

  • Nandika DSouza, Dallas SWE VP of Outraeach, presented a session, “Let’s Include the Elephant in the Room”, about recognizing and celebrating the cultural differences that bring us diversity in perspectives and ideas.
  • Alicia M. Morgen, Dallas SWE Program Committee Member, spoke on “Women in STEM: Your Story, Your Voice, Your Power”, leveraging your personal experience to inspire others.

SWE Region C Awards

Dallas SWE took home several awards from Region C Conference!

  • Most Creative Membership Campaign – for our partnership with Lennox International on member recruitment events, new member orientations, and our 2015 Holiday Mixer.
  • Joint Professional and Collegiate Activity Award – for our partnership with SMU SWE on two Design Your World STEM Conference for Girls events, She Networks She Wins, and our LCC-led Leadership Workshop in 2015.
  • Outstanding Professional Section Participation Award – for exceptional attendance at Region and Society conferences, on-time delivery of section reports, and award nomination submissions.
  • Governor’s Choice Award – for Shelley Stracener’s contributions as Dallas SWE Webmaster and Region C Secretary & Webmaster, facilitating communication between the Society and Sections, promoting social media use for sections and Region C, and crocheting turtle mascots for Region C Sections & MALs.

Fundraising

Dallas SWE offered Region C Conference attendees purple polo shirts, mousepads, and stickers emblazoned with the SWE logo and tagline, “Aspire, Advance, Achieve”. Funds raised from the sale of these items help us provide great professional development programs, outreach activities, and scholarships to our local Dallas communities! We’ll have these items for sale at each of our meetings going forward so keep an eye out and support our local section!

Other Highlights

There were several excursions during the conference including a tour of the local WalMart distribution center and a trip to Dickson Street for a night on the town after the Award Banquet. We had a lot of fun socializing with old friends and making new ones!

Our latest Employee Resource Group contacts at Lennox sponsored the Region C Conference and were represented at the Career Fair where they networked with professionals and collegiates looking for employment! We look forward to more success from this partnership with Lennox!

We also spent a lot of time together as a leadership team getting to know each other better and talking about how we can better serve our members.

Personal Reflections

The Walmart distribution center tour gave an in depth view of their operations, automation with respect to warehouse and shipping technologies. The volume of items coming in and shipping out is very large. It also gave us an insight on challenges faced as some products have different packaging needs that make it difficult to automate the distribution process.
Sustainability Engineering was not heard of when I went to Graduate School, but now there is a lot of work done in the area. Jasmina burek (Univ of Arkansas’ Student) even won a Poster competition regarding the same topic. It is great to see research done on reducing carbon footprint, recycling and making the industrial world more sustainable.
~Shilpa Nagaraj

My SWE network is my most valuable professional and personal mentoring resource in my career. Serving as a leader at Section, Region, and Society levels has opened up a world of opportunities to me that I never would have experienced in my “day job.” I’ve been a SWE member for a long time but at this year’s Region Conference I learned about several new ways folks can get involved with SWE committees. Volunteering with SWE is always a rewarding experience, I encourage everyone to get involved and find out what SWE has to offer to you!
~Shelley Stracener, Dallas SWE Webmaster, SWE Region C Secretary & Webmaster

This was my first time attending a SWE Conference as well as presenting there. My particular topic was “Women in STEM: Your Story, Your Voice, Your Power.”  I enjoyed the conference and the consistent message of embracing your own story. Here are a few quotes that inspired me during the conference!
“Life is variable. SWE is consistent. As you move forward give back and inspire others.”
~Amy Spivey, Senior Vice President of Wal-Mart International Activity Management
“Enjoy the journey the twists and the turns. Consider not just big companies. It’s the value of the experience that matters.”
~Kristina Worgan, Director of Operational Excellence at Baldor Electric Company
I have been inspired to continue my journey and enjoy the process of evolving in my career and diversity mindset.
~Alicia M. Morgan, Dallas SWE Program Committee Member

As a single mom having to take care and of my children, nurturing them in all aspect of their lives, and juggling a career, I forget my existence as an individual. Attending this conference is the best decision I’ve made. It allowed me to think about turning the focus back on me, what’s important to me to grow personally and professionally. The sessions I attended did just that.
The connections and friendships I’ve gained are worth all the time and effort. I also appreciated the bonding, caring, nurturing, and support from all women I was surrounded with. Thank you!
~Tram Trinh, Dallas SWE Social Media Manager

 

Event Recap: January Meeting at Southwest Airlines

by Dallas SWE on in Meetings
Group photo in Southwest Airlines lounge.
Group photo in Southwest Airlines lounge.

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) goals and objectives include professional excellence. SWE develops engineers at all stages of their personal and professional lives.  The Society’s objective is to develop an education, experience, and exposure-based portfolio for all career and life stages. SWE Dallas has accepted this challenge to provide presentations from leaders in engineering and tech industries who can give insight into opportunities for personal and professional excellence. On Tuesday, January 19th, SWE Dallas members had the opportunity to meet Jamita Barnett-Machen who hosted a professional development meeting at Southwest Airlines headquarters. Jamita is an honoree selected by the Dallas Business Journal in partnership with TeXchange DFW in the 2015 inaugural North Texas Women in Technology Awards program. The program highlights an amazing group of twenty-five trailblazers and honors their incredible achievements. Currently, Jamita is the only female Information Technology Architect at Southwest Airlines.  One of Jamita’s responsibilities is overseeing Southwest Airline’s complex technical life cycles from inception, requirements analysis and design to fluid implementation phases. Jamita has made significant contributions in software development, engineering, and architecture solutions. She’s also a doctoral candidate at SMU.

Jamita Burnett-Machen
Jamita Barnett-Machen

Jamita spoke to Dallas SWE members about work-life balance.  She provided her personal insight into taking vacations at home commonly called staycations. She mentioned her staycations in Dallas where she books a hotel for herself, spends the weekend reading, relaxing or going to a spa. She challenged the audience to do something that you want to do just because.  She mentioned that women often times are responsible for home and work but don’t get a lot of time to do things just for themselves. Jamita’s thing to do outside of her work life is being a DJ part time under the name DJ Rojas. Overall, the advice she gave to the audience is not saying yes when you should be saying no.  The most important thing that Dallas SWE members are encouraged to do is to organize yourself to reduce stress and to check your calendars in advance before taking on any extra responsibilities.

SWE Dallas thanks Jamita for hosting such an incredible event and providing our members the opportunity to relax and enjoy a quality professional development experience.

~Alicia Morgan, Dallas SWE Program Committee Member

Full Bio

Upon graduating from Texas A&M University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Jamita Barnett-Machen, MBA, continues to shatter through glass ceilings. Jamita has many leadership roles during her career spanning the defense, mobile, e-commerce and travel industries with a focus on Information Technology. Some key highlights include being a part of the Executive Mentorship Program at IBM and becoming the first African-American female Principal Application Architect at American Airlines. Currently, Jamita is the only female Information Technology Architect at Southwest Airlines. The Dallas Business Journal and TeXchange DFW also recognizes her as one of the top 25 North Texas Women in Technology.

Simultaneously, Jamita has continued to broaden her skillset by acquiring various degrees such as a Master of Science in Computer Science from DePaul University and an Executive MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas. Currently, she is pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Computer Science from Southern Methodist University.

Outside of work, Jamita volunteers her time with multiple organizations such as being the President of the Arlington Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., sitting on the board of the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce, sitting on the Strategic Council for the Texas A&M Computer Science Department and as the Vice President for the Black Former Student Network of Texas A&M University.

Jamita currently resides in the Dallas area with her husband, Russell Machen and daughter, Reya.

SWE Merchandise for Sale!

by Dallas SWE on in Announcements

We’re very excited about our new FY16 fundraising initiative! We’ve printed some SWE-branded merchandise that we’ll sell at our upcoming Jan 19 Professional Development Meeting, at the Region C Conference in February, and other upcoming Dallas SWE events. Unfortunately we are not offering online orders or shipping at this time. Get yours while supplies last!

Funds raised will support our professional development offerings, K-12 outreach events in our local communities, and annual scholarships to local college-bound engineering students!

Prices are as follows:

  • SWE Polo Shirt (purple cotton), sizes S-XL: $30 each
  • SWE Mousepad: $10 each
  • SWE Bumper Sticker (vinyl): $5 each

FY16 Merch

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