Vice President of Community Outreach Candidates
Why are you running for this executive position?
I’m running for VP of Outreach and Treasurer because I want to use my vision to shape UW SWE. I have been involved with SWE outreach for the past two years and would love to expand SWE outreach to get more women excited about engineering. I’m passionate about encouraging girls to follow careers in engineering and believe that outreach is the branch that has the most direct impact on the next generation of female engineers. We hold many events each year, such as tabling, conferences, and in-person school visits, where local students get first hand engineering experience and can talk to women engineers. As VP of Outreach, I want to expand the branch even more, and build more connections with local high schools, as well as work with the College of Engineering to make SWE a part of their outreach program. I’m running for Treasurer because I want to get more involved with SWE on the organizational side. I had experience creating a budget when I was planning the Engineering Exploration Conference, and know how important it is to create high-quality events while still staying under budget. As Treasurer, I would focus on making sure we only hold events of the highest quality, instead of having many small, poorly funded events. High quality events will attract more people to SWE and get them interested in engineering. I want more women and nonbinary engineers to join UW SWE, and find a community where they can feel accepted and supported in engineering.
What is your past involvement with SWE at UW?
I have been involved with the UW SWE Outreach branch since my freshman year. I started out in my freshman year as the lead of the Engineering Exploration Committee, then was elected to High School Outreach Conference Director for this past year. In my first year with SWE, the Engineering Exploration Conference was a new program that had only been held once the year before. As the committee lead, I had to make much of the content from scratch, including a sailboat activity that taught the girls about the iterative engineering design process. The conference was a huge success, with over 80 students in attendance from disadvantaged high schools, and I loved seeing the excitement on girls’ faces as they learned about engineering and experienced what UW has to offer. This past year, as one of the High School Outreach Directors, I’ve been focused on expanding the high school outreach branch as a whole. We have built new relationships with local high schools, and are even thinking of starting a new mentorship program with students from a local high school. Under my leadership, outreach has also gotten involved in many new events this year, including the Introduce a Girl to STEM event in February, and the upcoming Engineering Discovery Days. Introduce a Girl to STEM was one of my favorite events this year, as we held a create your own lava lamp activity for around 400 girls, and it was great getting to interact with so many kids and show them that STEM can be fun. If elected, I would use my experience in outreach to expand SWE and get more women interested in STEM.