We have some great leadership and volunteer opportunities for you coming up! We’re still trying to nail down detailed descriptions for our Programs, Nominating, Membership, Professional Awards, Outreach Awards, Scholarship, Social Media & Fundraising Committees, but we should have the call for interest out in the next week or so! Applications (really, just your indication of interest and a short paragraph about why you’d be a great fit for the position) will be due September 1st!
Additionally, there’s a great opportunity coming just around the corner to help Girl Scouts Find STEM Role Models. Design Your World, a STEM Conference for 4th and 5th grade girls on October 19, 2013, is one of our major outreach events and you do not want to miss it! A description of volunteer responsibilities can be found here, and you can sign up as a volunteer here. If you can’t volunteer but have friends or family who are interested in attending can stay tuned to the Design Your World website or sign up for email updates via Constant Contact!
SMU Profiled SWE member and SMU SWE Treasurer Rachel Shepherd about her experience as a Co-Op with Toyota! She got the job from attending the Career Fair at the annual SWE Conference! Check out her story here.
This year’s annual conference is October 23-26, 2013. For more information about the conference and registration, please visit the WE13 Conference website!
We are pleased to announce that we have tentatively scheduled the next Design Your World – STEM Conference for Saturday, October 19th at Southern Methodist University!
The Dallas Society of Women Engineers is working with the SMU SWE Section to plan this event to inspire the next generation of engineers!
More details will be released as the planning process continues, but be sure to sign up for the Parents/Educators or Volunteer – Design Your World list via constant contact!
In addition, check out this short presentation on just exactly WHY we need to host events like this and for ways to get involved and additional local outreach resources! We hope you can join us for this awesome conference in October!
This conference, organized by our SWE Region C Leadership Coaches, is a fantastic opportunity to learn more about SWE’s organization and leadership opportunities, make connections with Region C and National SWE leaders, and learn about how to be an effective, professional, and inclusive leader in SWE and in your profession! The focus of summit sessions are primarily for Section and Regional Officers, but non-members are encourage to attend since SWE is a mostly volunteer organization and we need leaders like YOU to help grow and improve our chapters! There will also be some fun social activities planned for Friday night since the host hotel is close to all the downtown Fort Worth nightlife, so plan on making this a full weekend of fun, education, networking, and team building!
If you register online NOW through August 2, your $100 registration fee (checks due by Aug 9) will be 100% reimbursed when you attend the attendance. That’s right, this conference will be effectively FREE if you register by FRIDAY and then show up at the conference.
If you register online between August 3 and August 16, $50 of the $100 registration fee (checks due by Aug 15) will be refunded when you attend the conference.
On-site registration on August 16 or 17 is $150. ***There will be no refunds for on-site registration or no-shows.***
To register, fill out the Online Registration Form and follow the instructions to send in your payment.
Hotel reservations can be made for the discounted rate of $109 per night (Friday and Saturday) by calling the Courtyard Blackstone reservation desk at 1-800-321-2211. Be sure to reference the “Society of Women Engineers Room Block.” This discounted rate is only available for reservations made on or before Friday, August 2 so please make your reservations this week! If you are not staying at the hotel, Saturday’s activities are scheduled from 8am-5pm and parking at the hotel is $20 per day.
Don’t delay, sign up today to reserve your spot at the 2013 Region C Leadership Summit!
Volunteers from Dallas SWE and Fort Worth SWE rolled out their first outreach event sponsored by NASA’s Summer of Innovation Program at Moon Day this year. Nandika D’Souza coordinated our presence at Moon Day with event organizer Ken Murphy at the Frontiers of Flight Museum near Love Field in Dallas. This event, held on Saturday, July 20, commemorated the 44th anniversary of the first moon landing. Also in attendance were a great variety of organizations involved in astronomy, astrophysics, aviation, and engineering. It was a great day for families to come and learn about the moon and how scientists and engineers work together to explore our solar system and beyond!
Some of our Moon Day Volunteers: Alicia D’Souza, Teri Cates, Shelley Stracener, Barbara Read, Debbie S., Melissa Tacconi, Hope Toole, Nandika D’SouzaSome of our volunteers teaching Girl Scouts about electrical circuits.
The Dallas SWE booth was located prominently below the museum’s big American Flag, hung from their second story balcony in the large atrium. Visitors to our table were invited to learn about electronic circuits and create some of their own using 9-volt batteries, resistors, potentiometers, speakers, and LEDs. Approximately 120 children enjoyed our hands-on activity! We informed the children and their parents about how important it is for astronauts to use their limited power resources wisely while in space. Girl Scouts who visited our booth also answered a few questions about basic physics, engineering, and astronomy principles in order to earn their “Engineering” badge in the STEM series of badges.
The fact that this was an open event inclusive to all ages, girls and boys, gave our Dallas SWE section a great opportunity to talk to the community about our organization and other outreach opportunities we have throughout the year. Many of our visitors had never heard of the Society of Women Engineers!
Moon Day X-Plane Construction Group led by Letia Blanco!
Later in the afternoon, the always enthusiastic Letia Blanco and her fellow Raytheon volunteers hosted another hands-on activity with a smaller group in one of the Flight Museum’s classrooms. Letia gave an exciting and informative presentation about some of the rockets Raytheon has helped NASA develop and the kids then got to color, cut out, and assemble their own model X-plane to perform some test flights, just like real engineers! The kids loved customizing their rockets and Letia’s ebullient personality even got the adults in the room excited about engineering development and test cycles. Thanks to all the Raytheon employees and Dallas SWE volunteers who helped with this special session!
Dallas SWE has been welcomed back to Moon Day next year, so if you missed out, be on the lookout for this and other opportunities to get involved in your community in FY 2014!
As you know, SWE is the driving force that establishes engineering as a highly desirable career for women through an exciting array of training and development programs, networking opportunities, scholarships, outreach and advocacy activities, and much more. Therefore, we invite you to join the Dallas Section Officers for the Annual Planning meeting for FY14.
This meeting is an opportunity for the membership to share what they want to see/hear/do during the next year with Dallas SWE. Are there existing outreach programs that you volunteer with that would align with the SWE misson? Is your company on the cutting edge of some new technology that would interest our membership? Have you recently heard someone speak or read a book that would be of interest to other women engineers? Are you just curious and want to learn more about our section?
