WEPAN Newsletter July 2024

Save the Date for the 2025 WEPAN Awards

The 2025 WEPAN Awards will be presented at the 2025 Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (CoNECD) conference in San Antonio, TX.

WEPAN Awards honor accomplishments that underscore WEPAN’s mission of advancing cultures of inclusion and diversity in engineering higher education and workplaces. A robust slate of awards recognizes key individuals, programs, and organizations who have enhanced the engineering profession.

Creating change can be difficult, and the efforts of those who work to increase participation, retention, and success of women and other underrepresented groups in engineering can often go unnoticed and unappreciated. The WEPAN Awards are designed to recognize and thank honorees for their contributions to engineering and equity work in academia, industry, and the wider community.

Applications will open September 27, 2024.

Events

Save the Date for the 2025 ADVANCE EiSCC!

Mark your calendars! Next year's ADVANCE EiSCC will take place June 1-4 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

News

Building Trust to Drive an Inclusive Innovation Ecosystem

The Renewing American Innovation Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently hosted a panel discussion highlighting a new report commissioned by Invent Together called, “The Role of Trust in Advancing Equity in Innovation.”

The report reveals several barriers to equity in invention, highlighting the urgent need to build trust within the innovation ecosystem. One of the main recommendations in the report for building trust and closing the inventor diversity gap was to increase the knowledge and awareness of patenting. According to the study, new inventors with at least some knowledge were more than twice as likely to know where to start and who to talk to pursue a patent. However, more than 80% of potential inventors report having minimal to no knowledge of patents.

To bridge this gap, resources like The Inventors Patent Academy (TIPA) are invaluable. TIPA is a free, online course that is designed to help historically underrepresented inventors understand patenting, intellectual property, and the application process.

Developed by Invent Together in collaboration with Qualcomm, TIPA has been recognized as an exemplary IP education program by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in the National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation. This course is a great first step for inventors, as it provides foundational education about the patent system along with trust building and transparency about the patent application process.

Take steps today to educate yourself and others on the importance of trust in driving an inclusive innovation ecosystem. Here are three simple actions:

1. Watch - The CSIS Panel Discussion on the report launch.
2. Read the Report - The Role of Trust in Advancing Equity in Innovation
3. Share and Take - The Inventors Patent Academy!‍

Join the movement, shape the future!

SEER Workshop Series: Promoting Equity-Driven Change in Higher Education

In this workshop series, you will build your individual change capacity through the new and innovative SEER Process centered in the Inclusive Professional Framework (IPF) that helps you better see yourself as a change agent, better see your organization and change system, and increase your knowledge, skills, and confidence to build more productive initiatives and relationships towards advancing change.

You will leave the series with:

• an individual, change agent action plan that will help you in your current change efforts
• a process that you can replicate within your teams.

Cost: Free

Audience: Individuals working to advance equity-driven change in higher education, including faculty, leaders, and staff from colleges, universities, grant initiatives, disciplinary and professional societies, and higher education and higher education-aligned organizations.

Time Commitment: 4, 4-hour sessions (Attendance at all four sessions is not mandatory)
Cost: Free

Dates:  July 23, July 26, August 1, August 6

Time: 11am-3pm ET

Register at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XDvJNTiutGU2ADn_69CW0Oa_csx-vb8vtfkBdLlB6Ek/viewform?edit_requested=true  

Free Resume Review in the WEPAN Career Center

The WEPAN Career Center offers a wealth of resources to help members achieve their career goals, including a FREE resume critique service, which offers a resume review by a resume-writing expert.  While it's important that a resume is current and complete, it's also important that it stands out.

Within a few days of submitting a resume, an evaluation is sent outlining strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions to ensure best chances of landing an interview.

The process is simple:

1. Click "Manage Resumes" under the Career Center Job Seekers tab
2. Click "Upload Resume File"
3. Choose the file to be uploaded
4. Click "YES" next to "submit my resume for a free evaluation from a trusted resume expert at TopResume”
5. On the pop-up window, click "Evaluate My Resume"
6. Proceed with the upload by clicking "Upload Resume"

Stand out to employers with a polished resume and increase your chances of landing their dream job! There are currently over 500 employers on the WEPAN Career Center, and over 1300 job openings.

WEPAN Listserv

Do you have something to tell the WEPAN community? Remember that subscription to the WEPAN-L listserv is a member benefit! Share announcements, post publication opportunities, and collaborate with colleagues from different institutions and organizations on special projects.

To subscribe to the WEPAN-L listserv, visit: lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/wepan-l

Resources

Publications, reports, or communications relevant to women in engineering and STEM equity. All resources listed below are available in the ARC Network online resource library. If you need help accessing the library, please contact ARC Librarian Bethany Farmer at bethany@wepan.org.  

• "Strategic approaches for DEI Implementation in Engineering Education" by M. Palaninatha Raja and A. M. Abirami

"The quality of education that one gets is directly related to his quality of life. Equity plays the vital role in offering quality education to all by addressing their issues, barriers and challenges. A fair and inclusive learning environment are the most important factors to provide equitable education. It aims to provide equal opportunities to all students for developing the successful and socially responsible engineering graduates. The education system has to be modernized with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) principles and policies that ensure valuable and quality education for all students. This article demonstrates the strategic implementation of different DEI strategies adopted in the Engineering Institute and discussed the results obtained out of them."

ARC Network

Funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Program, Awards HRD-2121468 and HRD-1740860, the ADVANCE Resource and Coordination (ARC) Network seeks to achieve gender equity for faculty in higher education science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. WEPAN serves as the backbone organization of the ARC Network.‍

Read the ARC Emerging Research Workshop Reports

Emerging Research Workshops help move scholarship and practice forward by producing cross-disciplinary and intersectional perspectives on emerging topics critical to equity for STEM faculty. Reports are available on the following topics:

• Identity-based Harassment
• Big Data and Algorithms
• Exclusionary STEM Language
• COVID-19 and Faculty Equity
  

Institutional WEPAN Membership

Want to encourage your institution to deepen its commitment to equity and excellence?

Consider becoming an Institutional Champion Member. At this membership level, institutions have unlimited member representatives who get to dive into critical diversity, equity, and inclusion issues through custom workshops. These members also get the opportunity to strengthen their inclusive leadership capacity as part of the Equity and Excellence Council. Additional Institutional Champion member benefits include:

• Professional Development
• Decades of resources in the WEPAN Knowledge Center
• Professional development webinars, including one featuring an invited speaker from your institution
• Free and discounted workshops, including one customized for your institution
• Free and discounted access to WEPAN’s Program Days
• Three annual convening registrations
• Communication & Networking
• WEPAN-L listserv
• Slack
• WEPAN member directory
• Social media spotlights of your institution
• Workforce
• Free and discounted job postings for your institution in WEPAN’s Career Center

For more information on how to become a WEPAN Institutional Member, please email membership@wepan.org.

WEPAN Slack Channel

Please join us on Slack to drive that connectivity across our membership during a critical time for connection. Join our Slack community today!

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