DEI — SWE UW

SWE@UW’s Diversity Principles

As a part of the national Society of Women Engineers, SWE@UW aims to uphold SWE National’s diversity sentiments: “The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) values diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential to our mission. SWE believes in a world where equal opportunities and equitable outcomes exist for all” [link to full statement].

As an affinity group, SWE@UW contributes to the diversity, equity, and inclusion for women and non-binary folx in engineering at UW, but we also recognize that the people in our community face layers of marginalization and oppression along with their complex identities. SWE@UW is committed to ensuring our members are empowered and uplifted while engaging as a part of our community and in UW. (Don’t know what Intersectionality means? Watch this fantastic Ted Talk: Kimberlé Crenshaw - The urgency of Intersectionality).

Even though our leadership team tries our best in creating an inclusive community for all, we are not perfect and we might make mistakes because of limitations of our own positionalities. In those instances we would encourage you to share your experiences with us, so we could learn from them and improve in the future. Please use the below form to share your (positive or negative) experiences with inclusion in our events and programs. We really appreciate your efforts and honesty in making SWE@UW a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive community - thank you!

We encourage our members to share their personal resources or provide feedback on what they would like from SWE UW. Feel free to submit a resource and/or provide feedback here.

Submit here

Our Efforts toward an Inclusive UW Engineering Community

Action-oriented land acknowledgement

Through stating a land acknowledgement at our events and meetings, our leadership aims to educate SWE@UW members about the history of UW and its land with respect to the past and present native peoples of Seattle. As our members are future engineers and technologists, we raise awareness to their responsibilities in creating a more inclusive future.

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Duwamish, Puyallup, Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.

In SWE@UW, we believe that the land acknowledgement is only the first step. There is a long road ahead for us to educate ourselves about the history of the land, and support the thriving Native American Communities who have always been on this land previously, currently, and in the future. There are great resources in and beyond UW for all of us to start the educational and reflective journey, and we highly recommend you all to check them out.

Resources

Learn more about the oppression and marginalization of Indigenous Americans:

Native Land Website - Educate yourself about Indigenous territories: https://native-land.ca/
The name change of Little Canoe Channel on North Campus and the significance of wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House on campus, please check out this conversation with UW Tribal Liaison Iisaaksiichaa Ross Braine:
Burke Museum: https://www.burkemuseum.org/
Center for American Indian & Indigenous Studies: https://caiis.uw.edu/

Take action towards change:

Stand with the Duwamish (supports an effort for the Duwamish tribe to be federally recognized, both financial and service contributions appreciated): https://www.duwamishtribe.org/stand-with-the-duwamish
Real Rent Duwamish: https://www.realrentduwamish.org/
First Nations @ UW: https://sites.uw.edu/fnuw/

Attend the Powwow: https://sites.uw.edu/fnuw/powwow/

Accessible Programming

We are currently working on an initiative to increase accessibility at our events to welcome people with all abilities and from all backgrounds.

These efforts include training our event planning officers on how to make events accessible for people with disabilities, such as including access accommodation requests in our RSVP forms, providing captions, and accommodating dietary restrictions when possible.

We aim to make most of our events free for all UW students. For our events that cost money, we offer ticket scholarships for attendees with financial need (to inquire about ticket scholarships, please contact our treasurer, Malisha Shah, and advisor, Gail Cornelius at uwswe.treasuer@gmail.com and gailcorn@uw.edu.
There is always room for growth, so we tremendously appreciate your feedback (form linked above).