Society Of Women Engineers - Wichita Area Section (I05) Career Guidance

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SWE Mentor Program

The SWE Electronic Mentoring Project encourages young women to pursue courses and careers in science, engineering and computing by providing the opportunity to communicate with female professionals in the engineering field.   Any woman who is a professional in engineering discipline or related field who has the time, commitment and patience to get to know and help a young woman on-line.   Mentees are high school women who are taking science/math/pre-engineering courses and has an interest in talking to and learning from an adult in a mentoring relationship.

 As an e-mail mentor, you will:

•  Correspond regularly with their mentee.
•  Encourage a mentee to think, act, and evaluate.
•  Praise, prod, connect, and listen.
•  Help a young woman identify and develop her potential.
•  Encourage a mentee to use her strengths, follow her dreams and accept challenges.
•  Provide validation, advice, and support to help young women make decisions about pursuing courses and careers in engineering and related fields.
•  Enable young women to work through their concerns when considering studies in technical disciplines.
•  Address the isolation young women experience in pre-engineering study classrooms, e.g. math, science, physics, etc.
•  Provide opportunities for young women to discuss their coursework and develop strategies for dealing with difficult subject matter and situations.
•  Provide young women with sound career advice

 Expectations for Mentors

•  Throughout the mentoring period, mentors must check their mailboxes twice per week.
•  Posting from your mentee or other program participants should be responded to in a timely fashion - this is the key to maintaining successful discussions.
•  Listening carefully to your mentee’s needs and concerns is an important part of the mentor’s role.
•  Point your mentee to related resources and/or provide her with general career and resource information.
•  Mentors should request help by e-mail or by phone  to the Mentor Coordinator when a situation arise that they feel they need help handling.
•  Mentors are expected to provide feedback to the Mentor Coordinator and other program participants about their experiences with electronic mentoring. This is vital to on-going improvement of the program.
•  Give your mentee recognition for effort and improvement. Let your mentee know she is valued.
•  Examine your schedule and be realistic about the quality of your involvement. It is important to set aside time to respond to your mentee.
•  Mentors must let mentees know if they will be unable to respond to her e-mail for a period of time. Let mentees know if you will be unavailable or slow to respond to requests at anytime in the mentoring period.
• Mentors should be sensitive to cultural diversity.
• Share your experiences with your mentee with the intention that she may or may not consider your advice

 

Benefits of Being a Mentor

• Satisfaction.....of helping a young person
• Convenience....of doing a career guidance project that you can fit in regardless of your schedule
• Vitality....of staying in touch with new ideas and new people
• Fun....of being involved with the exciting and promise-filled future of a young potential engineer
• Friendships....with people you might not otherwise have met

This is a great career guidance program.  To be a mentor, fill out and return a Mentor Application form available on-line at http://www.swe.org/SWE/StudentServices/CareerGuidance/MentorProg.html.  For additional information, you may contact Amy Avitable, Mentor Coordinator, at amy.b.avitable@boeing.com.

Engineering Expo 2001

This is the biggest event SWE Wichita section does for Career Guidance.  We are sponsoring this event  February 10, 2001 at WSU.  You can check out the general photos or go to a booth page and see the photos from it. (*Indicates booths that will not be available at February's event.)

Booths that will be available:

• Airplanes (Aerospace Engineer) - Participants will make/decorate paper airplanes, and test their plane against others to see "who's go the distance".
• Bones, Bones, Bones (Biomedical Engineering) - This booth will demonstrate examples of basic engineering principles applied to various implants used in the body.  Participants will be able to handle real-life orthopaedic implants and learn about the materials and mechanics used in their design.
• Bottle Rockets (Aerospace Engineering) - Participants will make their own bottle rockets out of 2 liter bottles, clay, and straws.
• Bridge Building (Civil Engineering) - Participants will work with a team to construct a bridge.
• Circuit Boards (Electrical Engineering) - Participants will learn about circuits and perform experiments on material conductivity.
• Computer Guts (Computer Engineering) - Participants will see and handle the ins and outs of the computer and its components.
• Gears (Mechanical Engineering) - Participants will utilize plastic gears for a better understanding of how gears function.
• *Hot Air Balloons(Aerospace Engineering) - Participants will make hot air balloons.
• Painting Flowers (Chemical Engineering)
• Remote controlled robots (Industrial Engineering) - Participants will practice moving objects and working with a team to build structures.
• Robot Construction w/ Lego robots (Applications engineering) - Participants will build Lego robots.
• Slime (Chemical Engineering) - Participants will make slime.
• Volcanoes (Chemical Engineering) - Participants will learn how to make a volcano out of clay and chemical reactions to set it off.

Aerospace Engineering
    Bottle Rocket Simulator
    Hot Air Balloons
    Paper Airplanes
BioMedical Engineering
    Bones
Chemical Engineering
    Balloons
    Slime
    Volcanoes
Civil Engineering
    Bridge
        Demonstrates the principles of truss loading and bridge construction (Carla R.)
Computer Engineering
    Computer Guts
Electrical Engineering
    Electric Circuits
Mechanical Engineering
    Gears
Industrial Engineering/Robotics
    Robots
    Robot Construction

Related Links

National SWE Career Guidance
Kansas Science Olympiad

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