By Beth Myers, PhD

Beth is the Director of Assessment and Accreditation at the University of Colorado Boulder and an active SWE-RMS member.

I was fortunate to be chosen to participate in the unique experience of the Academic Leadership for Women in Engineering (ALWE) workshop at WE16 in October. Here are a few details from their website:

“ALWE was developed to address the need for more women in positions of academic leadership in engineering and to foster the professional growth of women within the academy, SWE developed ALWE in 2011. In the fall of 2015, SWE was awarded a four year grant from the National Science Foundation called ASSIST (Grant No. 1548200). The program is also partially funded through the generosity of the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. ALWE participants learn best practices that promote the success and persistence of academic career pathways and facilitate interaction between academic and engineering. The overarching purpose of ALWE is to give female academics in engineering departments an introduction to the tangible skills and knowledge needed to pursue and gainfully acquire institutional leadership positions at a university.”

Multiple times while attending WE16 I found myself saying “These are the leaders of our future!” And, I was excited about the possibilities of that future; women engineers have a unique opportunity to lead our world because of their technical knowledge and leadership skills. I had an incredible time meeting other amazingly talented women engineers who all have the goal of leadership in academia. At ALWE we spent time networking and acquiring skills in exploring, negotiating, mentoring, building support networks, turning bias into opportunity and moving from perfection to action.

One topic that really impacted me was around mentoring. While I work in a field (higher education) that values mentoring for our students to increase retention and satisfaction, I realized that I personally have not had a “real”, structured mentoring situation. I have interacted with many people who have guided me through my career and even given me advice (sometimes unsolicited) but I have never sought out a mentor. From this workshop, I realized that I need to seek out a mentor but before I do, I should evaluate what I want to do, learn, be, as a result of working with a mentor. Then I need to find someone who can offer what I want to learn but will also challenge and push me out of my comfort zone.  I am committed to making that happen.

A second and particularly timely topic we discussed was negotiating and how negotiating is more challenging for women because of the biases and norms in our society. Women are treated differently when they negotiate than men are.  I say this was timely for me because I was offered a new role at work as the Director of Assessment and Accreditation for our college. The offer came on Thursday evening while attending WE16 (YAY, very exciting) so I was literally in the process of negotiating salary and other work related terms while attending this workshop. I felt more prepared to ask for what I wanted and negotiate when I didn’t receive my initial request because of the knowledge and skills I gained at WE16 and ALWE.

Lastly, I stopped into a session I wasn’t planning on attending at WE16 (sometimes those are the best sessions) that was being led by Dr. Jenna Carpenter about Advancing Your Career using Social Media. For many years I have worked for someone who has not taken advantage of promoting what we are doing even though we do amazing work. After this presentation from Jenna, I am convinced that women need to start doing more self-promotion. This blog post is my first attempt at promoting what I am doing. Expect to see another post from me soon that describes an invited presentation I am giving at the University of Queensland in Australia to representatives from 18 engineering colleges that promotes recruiting more women in engineering. I encourage you all to do the same and promote the great work you are doing too!

FY24 SWE Recognition Awards
Awards

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College

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2024 RMS Summit Awards
Members | Awards

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College | Prof Dev

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Outreach

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Awards | General | Members | Prof Dev

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