Saturday, February 26, 2011

SWE and National Engineering Week

To celebrate this year's National Engineering Week, SWE collaborated with the Boston Children's Museum to run an interactive science fair event for museum goers.


Here SWE volunteers begin setting up for a full day of activities.


One of the experiments performed used milk, food coloring and dish washing liquid to create a colorful explosion!


A group of volunteers gathers for a picture (check out the matching shirts!).


Thank you to SWE Outreach, the Boston Children's Museum staff and all the MIT volunteers for making this event possible!

Monday, February 21, 2011

SWE Retreat 2011

This past weekend, the incoming MIT SWE board gathered for a retreat to Plymouth, MA. After a long rush hour drive, our group finally arrived at our beautiful house for the weekend, Idlewild.


Here Jean and Anika pose for a picture upon arrival.

After a productive evening of planning, we started Saturday morning right with a home-cooked breakfast - yummy eggs, pancakes and bacon! Thanks to Liza and Kimmie for heading the kitchen team :)



Saturday afternoon, we broke into committees and spent the time planning upcoming events and getting to know our fellow board members. Our rented house was a beautiful backdrop for meetings and fun!


Here Joy works on a number of upcoming outreach projects. Safe to say, the new MIT SWE board had a wonderful time at retreat! We're all looking forward to starting the new semester and we have a number of exciting events planned which will soon be announced in more detail.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Introducing the Mason Magellan Program!

Become a mentor for the new
Mason Magellan Program


What is it?
The Mason Magellan Program is  new after school science program for grades 1-3 at Mason Elementary School, which is a nearby elementary school accessible by the 1 bus. This is a new program started by SWE's Off Campus Outreach Committee to encourage kids' interest in STEM and provide a safe, fun, and educational environment until they can go home. The activities will be around an hour long, and very simple to set up. For our first session, we will be making free-standing balloon towers as an engineering project. We're super excited to get this started, but we can't do it without you.

When does it run?
We're looking for several enthusiastic volunteers to come in once every two weeks for this semester on Tuesday afternoons from about 3:30-5:30, including transportation time, to mentor the program. Our first session is on March 1.

Why become a mentor?
This is a fantastic opportunity for you to have fun with kids, get away from the MIT craziness for awhile, get involved with MIT SWE, and gain planning experience, especially if you're interested in being on a SWE committee or planning board.

Please reply to mitswe.offcampus@gmail.com if you are interested. All majors, backgrounds (and gender) are welcome. Thank you so much, and we really can't do this without you!

All the best, 

MITSWE Off Campus Outreach

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Announcing the 2011 SWE Planning Board!

Hi MIT SWE,

Please join us in welcoming the new 2011 SWE Planning Board!  Congratulations to all- these extraordinary women stood out from a record applicant pool!

2011 MIT SWE Planning Board

Under the VP of Outreach Programming (Joy Jiao)
WiSE Chairs: Marianna See, Anjali Thakkar
KEYs Chairs: Sabine Scneider, Yuliya Preger
Girl Scout Outreach Chairs: Elizabeth Rowland, Katy Evans
Event Outreach Chairs: Jennifer Li, Neha Hebbar
Off-Campus Outreach Chairs: Jean Xin, Jie-Yoon Yang

Under the VP Campus of Relations (Jess Li)
Internal Social Chairs: Leslie Chan, Tara Ebsworth
Campus Social Chairs: JJ Zhao, Emily McDonald
Marketing Chairs: Vivian Dien, Priyanka Saha
Department Liaisons: Elizabeth Phillips, Audra Podany
Big/Lil Sib Program Coordinators: Lauren Greico, Andrea Fabre

Under the VP of Member Development (Liza Xu)
Membership Development Chairs: Shelly Jin, Angela Zhu
Advocacy Chairs: Deborah Hanus, Mary Guan
Public Relations Chair: Zainab Lasisi
Media Chair: Mari Miyachi
Senior Representatives: Elli Pula, Edna Ezzell

Under the VP of Professional Development (Katia Paramonova)
Professional Development Chairs: Pritee Tembhekar, Julia Jakolska
Corporate Relations Chairs: Anika Gupta, Lauren Lo, Yuchen Feng

We would also like to welcome a new member to SWE Exec - our new Webmaster will be Kimmi Li!

Again, thank you to all applicants and congratulations to the new board.

Best,

Ellen
MIT SWE President

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Apply to Join SWE Board

Hi SWE!

Are you interested in getting more involved with SWE?
  Do you want to develop your leadership abilities and have fun?  Do you like teaching students about math and science?  Do you want to get involved with professional development and networking?  Do you want to throw study breaks and plan social events?  Do you have interest in where women stand in the world beyond MIT?  Apply to join the 2011 MIT SWE Planning Board!  Descriptions of the 2011 board positions are at the end of this announcement.

Anyone is welcome to apply to join our board
- non-engineers and men are welcome too!  Please note: to apply to join the SWE Board, you must be a National member of SWE.  Not a member but want to apply?  Join SWE now - membership is only $20 per year, but we'll even reimburse you for half of it!  You can apply here: https://ams.swe.org/swessa/ssaauthmenu.show_top_menu, or just visit http://www.swe.org.

To apply, please send your answers to the following questions to swe-president@mit.edu by 11:59pm on February 3.  Interviews for positions will be held on February 6. 


- Name
- MIT email
- Year
- Major/minor
- Phone number
- Birthday
- Dorm/FSILG, room #
- Are you a National SWE Member?
  (If not, you can apply for membership here: https://ams.swe.org/swessa/ssaauthmenu.show_top_menu)
- Position(s) applying for (descriptions are at the end of this announcement)
- Why are you qualified for the position(s) you are applying for?
- Why do you want to get involved with MIT SWE?
- If your position has a co-chair, is there someone you would prefer to work with?
- Can you commit to regular meetings on Saturdays or Sundays (1-2 hours, biweekly, time TBD)?
- What other activities are you involved in on campus?


Best,

Ellen
MIT SWE President

--

Position descriptions:
Outreach

Off-Campus Outreach Chairs:
Join the newest branch of SWE Outreach for an exciting opportunity to explore new possibilities and develop new goals. This committee was started year and we've made a lot of exciting progress. New ideas and creativity is welcome!

Event Outreach Chairs:
E-week: Plan hands-on activities for Boston Children's Museum's Celebrate Engineering Week! The event culminates in an all-day extravaganza on Saturday, 2/24.
BeaverDash: An all-day high school girls and boys mystery engineering challenge. MIT students mentor groups of 4-6 to construct an apparatus out of everyday items like foam and string and cardboard boxes and participate in a competition at the end of the day. The topic of the competition is revealed on the morning of.
Exploring Majors Fair: High school students attend a panel of MIT professors and students for an informational and Q&A session about different majors at MIT. A lab tour at a MIT lab follows.

Girl Scouts Outreach Chairs:
Brownie Girl Scout Day: 120 Brownie Girl Scouts come to MIT to do small science experiments
Junior Girl Scout Day: 120 Junior Girl Scouts come to MIT to work together on an engineering challenge

WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Chairs:
Multiple times a semester a small group of high school girls come to MIT for an all day event visiting MIT labs, fun hands-on activities, and hearing panels of Professors and Professionals speak, talk to MIT students about different areas to study, learn about dealing with women’s issues.

Campus Relations

Internal Social Chairs:
Two individuals will be responsible for planning fun bonding activities for the SWE board. This includes the Wrentham trip, dinners in Boston, ice skating, etc.

Campus Social Chairs:
The Campus Social Chairs will be responsible for planning campus-wide study breaks. These events will aim to bring together the MIT community. They will also be working with the Department Liaisons to plan the semiannual Meet the Professors dinner.

Marketing Chairs:
The Marketing Chairs will be responsible for publicizing SWE to the rest of the MIT community. This includes updating the SWE bulletin in the Infinite, ordering SWE gear, and organizing the SWE booth in Lobby 10 during Orientation, CPW, and a few times throughout the year.

Department Liaisons:
The Department Liaisons will work together to help plan events that have an academic theme. These events may be panels, mixers, or study breaks. The goal is to give a chance for MIT students to meet other students with similar academic interests or faculty in that area of study. In addition, they will also be in charge of planning the semiannual Meet the Professors Dinner with the Campus Social Chairs.

Big/Lil Sib Program Coordinators:
The Big/Lil Program Coordinators will be responsible for the making the Big/Little pairings and planning Big/Little bonding activities.

Member Development

Membership Development Chairs:
Two individuals will work together to plan events to represent SWE during CPW and Orientation. This includes running booths at the Activity Fairs and planning informational dinners. Co-chairs may also be responsible for planning topic specific events throughout the semester with the goal of educating the MIT community about SWE to attract more members. In addition to main responsibilities with recruiting freshman, co-chairs are also responsible for planning the logics for the National Conference held in the fall. This entails booking flights, hotels, and entertainment for the duration of the conference. Finally, membership development chairs will play a large role in putting together a proposal for MIT to host the 2012 SWE Region F Conference. Previous experience dealing with organization of large groups traveling together and planning events is preferred but not required.

Advocacy Chairs:
Two individuals will work together to network with other women advocacy groups to plan events supporting the advancement of women via mentorship, networking, seminars, and panels. This includes working with gwamit, SWIM and other women’s groups. Although at MIT people are accustomed to seeing women in technical fields such as engineering, the workplace reflects a very different atmosphere. Thus, the goal of this position is to make people aware of the differences and promote further involvement of women on and outside of campus.

Public Relations Chair:
Individual will be responsible for communicating with other Boston area SWE chapters, both collegiate and professional, as well as MITSWE alumni. This involves planning alumni events to give members a chance to see what life is like after SWE and get MITSWE members to participate and local area conferences and meetings.

Media Chair:
Individual will be expected to attend events throughout the year and take either video or photos of the happenings. The documentation of the events will be used to further promote SWE by keeping the public informed of our organization. Furthermore, the individual may be expected to design Powerpoint presentations, videos, and a scrapbook. Experience with photography, design, and possibly MovieMaker and Photoshop are preferable.

Senior Representatives:
The Senior Reps will work together to plan events that center around topics of particular interest to seniors, such as transitioning from MIT into a full-time job or grad school, personal finance after graduation, and others.  Applicants for the Senior Representative positions must be seniors.

Professional Development

Professional Development Chairs
The goals of this position are to improve SWE members’ professionalism and prepare members for internships and jobs in the future.  Events include organizing workshops for members about improving resumes, preparing for interviews, learning how to network, and learning how to make the most out of Career Fairs.  Chairs will partner with the Careers Office on many workshops, and will aim to hold 1-2 events every 2 months which will be planned out at the beginning of the semester.  Chairs will be responsible for advertising events.
Corporate Relations Chairs
The Corporate Relations Chairs will bring companies to campus, with a focus on bringing in new companies and increasing the number of courses covered by those companies, to provide networking opportunities for students.  The events include info sessions, panels, and personalized company events such as site tours.  Chairs will also update the resume database and market it to new companies as we form partnerships with more companies.  Some events will be pre-planned at the beginning of each semester, but info sessions will come up by request from companies.  Chairs will be responsible for advertising events.
Career Fair Directors
Career Fair Directors represent SWE in the Career Fair Committee, and participate in organizing the MIT Fall 2011 Career Fair.  The commitment involves weekly meetings during summer 2011 and more frequent meetings in early fall 2011 leading up to the Career Fair.  Applications for this position will be sent out at the end of January by the Career Fair 2010 Directors.