WE15 Recap

Last year, I posted daily updates about my WE14 adventures. This year, life has been busy (read: too much traveling) and I have not had the time or energy to write long posts. That being said, here’s a long awaited recap of my WE15 adventures, beginning on Wednesday. (To read more about Tuesday and my arrival in Nashville, read this post.)

On Wednesday, I toured the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, TN (a 90-minute drive from downtown Nashville). I have always been fascinated by food & beverage production facilities (I’m a chemical engineer by background – what do you expect?) and enjoyed seeing the academic concepts of distillation & filtration come to life in a historic setting. Fun fact: the difference between Tennessee whiskey & Kentucky bourbon is that whiskey has an added production step – filtration through sugar maple charcoal. Afterwards, we ate lunch at Miss Mary Bobo’s House, famous for southern hospitality and insanely delicious food. I’m super excited that my dad’s Jack Daniels cookbook includes many of the recipes from Miss Mary Bobo’s!

Miss Mary Bobo’s House

We drove back to Nashville, and then the whirlwind of conference began, with committee meetings and dinner. When I graduated in 2013, I immediately jumped into society-level committees and quickly found my passion in SWE- outreach. I’ve since realized that in addition to being passionate about outreach, I also love recognizing and sharing outreach best practices, which fits quite nicely into my roles on the Outreach Committee and Awards & Recognition Committee. The Outreach Committee is spread throughout the United States, and though we meet monthly as a committee by phone, we only get to meet in person at annual conference. It was so nice to meet with the committee and our outreach representatives for each SWE region, and discuss what the regions’ future needs are from our committee.

I also attended Sing it to Begin It (the conference kickoff event and a live karaoke competition), which was a great addition to this year’s programming and a perfect fit for Nashville. The winner was actually a friend of one of my SWE Minnesota friends, and we had a great time cheering on all four contestants! (There is some serious vocal talent in SWE.)

Thursday morning’s opening keynote breakfast featured Nicki Palmer, senior vice president and chief network officer at Verizon Wireless. She was an inspiring, engaging speaker who immediately connected with the audience through her stories. Of the many things she shared that morning, one quote stood out to me – “Making things better is the fundamental job of an engineer.”  After her keynote, Nicki sat down for questions & answers with Colleen Layman, FY16 SWE President. She had so much wisdom to share – that for her, work-life integration is a constant push and pull (and varies by the day); that technology is useful and important to every career; and that each of us has many unique talents.

After the keynote, I attended a plenary session titled “Diversity and Inclusion: Partnering with Men to Create an Inclusive Workplace”, featuring a panel of leaders from a wide variety of industries, including (but not limited to) technology, academia, the military, and aerospace. One of the most striking comments was made by Bruce Maas, CIO at the University of Wisconsin – when he first assumed the role of CIO, no one could tell him how many women were in UW’s IT workforce. The panelists also offered several book recommendations (including Through the Labyrinth) and spoke to the cause-effect relationship of diversity & inclusion.

On Thursday afternoon, I attended the professional & joint meetings for my SWE region (Region i), where I had the chance to learn about several motions going before the Senate and other pertinent region business. Later that afternoon, I attended the Halo Circle Reception, an invitation-only reception for donors, life members, and supporters of SWE, and provided a chance to interact with the BOD/BOT and HQ staff. I spent the evening at the Boeing booth at the career fair, assisting where needed and talking to prospective interns/full-time hires about my experiences. I’ve loved recruiting since my days as an Engineering Ambassador at Mizzou, and love sharing what it’s really like to work here.

Our SWE corporate planning team hosts a breakfast at 7 AM on Friday each year at annual conference, to recognize any award winners.This year, I actually knew one of our award recipients. Dana Day (who received the Distinguished New Engineer Award this year) is the immediate past chair of the Outreach Committee and an integral part of the Invent It. Build It. planning team. We also received these adorable Boeing SWE bears –

https://instagram.com/p/9LmDqWRNBQeczsI1rFbTEMVuzLgC8TLSGA3y40/?taken-by=katenolan4

During the day on Friday, I attended several sessions, including “Role Models Matter” (presented by Techbridge in preparation for Invent It. Build It), “I’m Perfect: Why Isn’t Everyone Else?” (on combating and recovering from perfectionism, and “What Is SWE Advocacy?” (which discussed the Society’s newest strategic initiative). Each of these sessions provided excellent tips that can be applied in everyday life, whether that is developing a way to talk to young students about engineering, learning to use the positive aspects of perfectionism while shedding the negative aspects (something I’ve always struggled with), and discovering how to advocate for SWE and engineering in everyday life. I spent Friday evening at dinner with other St. Louis attendees and had a wonderful time.

And then came Saturday, which has been my favorite day of conference since I graduated from college. Invent It. Build It. is an outreach event targeted towards middle school girls in grades 6-8 and their adult influencers (parents & educators). WE15 marked the sixth-annual Invent It. Build It. event, and as in past years, included an expo with local & national STEM- and girl-focused organizations and companies; a parent/educator program with panels about coursework, college admissions, and discussing STEM fields with their students; a new high school girls’ program; and a girls’ program, where girls interacted directly with SWE members and worked on fun engineering projects.

I reprised my role as Activities Coordinator again this year. We sent an aluminum foil boat activity kit home with each of the girls this year, with some small revisions so that activities can be shared on social media. I also had the joy of coordinating the role model star volunteers – in this role, volunteers wear a pageant-style sash identifying their engineering discipline / field, and walk around the EXPO & registration areas, interacting with the girls and showing them a demo/activity that relates to their field. This year, 11 disciplines were represented by more than 40 volunteers from a wide variety of universities & industries!

The day was a huge success and was executed flawlessly, thanks to the efforts of 300 SWE volunteers. Our program featured Deysi Melgar (host of WGBH’s Design Squad Nation) as emcee and a keynote from Sylvia Acevedo, who began her career at JPL and IBM and later served as an executive at several Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Dell, Apple, and Autodesk. Her four major points were:

1. You can get there from here.
2. Practice until it becomes a skill.
3. See and say your goals.
4. Build your team to live your dream.

FY16 President Colleen Layman also addressed the girls and briefly discussed her role as vice president & resources business group water principal at HDR, an engineering consulting firm. The day’s activities included Touchdown (an egg-drop style activity) and Helping Hand (intended to simulate designing prosthetics), both developed by Design Squad Nation. I am looking forward to being involved with IIBI for many years to come!

Unfortunately, it was time for WE15 to come to a close. 😦 I attended the closing banquet, Celebrate SWE, with several friends I met through my years on CLCC (and was adopted by SWE Minnesota, as usual). I had a wonderful time presenting outreach awards in my sparkliest dress, but the real reason why I coordinate outreach awards is that I love seeing the work that SWE members are doing to impact future generations.

Presenting outreach awards at Celebrate SWE (photo credit: Kim Miller)

I didn’t envision any of this as a freshman, walking into my first SWE meeting in Lafferre E1419. My six-year journey in SWE (so far) has been full of surprises and has taught me so much, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the years ahead!

Kate