SWE - Fall 2007 - (Page 5) FY07 PRESIDENT’S FAREWELL Building Upon Our Accomplishments F all is my favorite season of the year. It is time for back-to-school, invigorating weather, brilliant colors, and a change in pace as friends and colleagues return from summer vacations and the workplace picks up. I enter this fall having completed my SWE marathon. The finish line is behind me and I am adjusting to life as a person with only a day job. What a year it has been! As this chapter is completed, another begins. I am actively seeking my next challenge, while the Society is building upon the accomplishments of this past year and entering a new phase of growth and development. The goodwill we created through our leadership in EWeek 2006 continued to pay dividends in 2007, and the Society’s contributions to the engineering community are recognized. Highlights from the past year include: • Our leadership in the outreach area (the new name for career guidance activities) was further recognized by the $1M grant from ExxonMobil. • SWE membership is over 20,000. • The Corporate Partnership Council increased from 43 to 50 members. • Our reputation has grown in the public policy area, as we continue leading efforts to address gender equity through Title IX, and the issues of K-12 STEM education. • We expanded the Wow! That’s engineering! program. • SWE was program chair for the WFEO Global Colloquium for Women in Engineering and Technology, held in Tunisia, in June. • The board of directors included two members born outside the United States, contributing to a broader, more global perspective. • We explored ways to expand our activities to community colleges, the source of over 40 percent of entering college students. • SWE continues building community, through local sections, Webinars, collegiates, international and special interest groups. Moving To The Next Level This year we furthered our diversity and inclusion strategy. As we discussed the attributes required of future leaders, we became more aware of how, by becoming truly inclusive, the results would manifest in multiple ways. Through dialogue, we realized that we need to nurture and develop talent in the leadership pipeline and that we must model inclusive behavior at the board level. We have a strategy and preliminary plan to develop a more diverse and inclusive organization, which the new leadership team is prepared to act upon. The opportunities I had to represent the Society this year complemented the board discussions on diversity and inclusion. I experienced significant personal and professional growth by participating in Hispanic Engineering, Science, & Technology Week in Texas, near the Mexican border. Five hundred middle school girls and their mothers, many of whom did not speak English, attended. I also journeyed to Mexico to be among the first women speakers at the Monterrey Chemical Engineering Conference. There I met women professors who helped me realize how fortunate I am to work in the U.S., The two presidents — Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Diana Gomez, left, and SWE’s Jude Garzolini — shared a moment during SHPE’s National Technical and Career Conference in Denver. At the Monterrey Chemical Engineering Conference I had the opportunity to meet women engineering professors from Mexico. SWE FALL 2007 5
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