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WEPAN Newsletter September 2023

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September 29, 2023

Register Now for the Women in Engineering Program Day

Don't forget to register for the Women in Engineering Program Day (WIEP) on Wednesday, October 18!

WIEP pays homage to WEPAN’s origins as an organization founded by Women in Engineering Program practitioners. Our third annual WIEP builds on the inaugural theme "calling us to remember our roots" and convenes practitioners and other stakeholders in the advancement of women in engineering to network, share resources, and discuss promising practices for supporting women in engineering.

Events

WEPAN Accelerator Program

While we welcome all who are interested, the WEPAN Accelerator Program Days are structured to empower and educate women and non-binary people in STEM in their entrepreneurship and commercialization journey. Applying an intersectional framework, we center people with multiple marginalized identities integrating contexts of systemic oppression and social stratification that influence access to support, resources, and critical knowledge. WEPAN is proud to partner with the AAC&U Convergence Program to provide professional and entrepreneurial development for BIPOC Women in STEM.

Schedule

Day 1 - October 10, 11am-3pm ET: Welcome, Introductions, & Expectations; Values, Vision, & Impact; Problem, Customers, & Solution
Day 2 - October 11, 2-4pm ET: WEPAN Accelerator Webinar: Claiming Your Power, Community Mixer
Day 3 - October 12, 11am-2pm ET: Pitch Prep, Value Proposition & Assumption Testing, Business Model & Traction, Optional Office Hours
Day 4 - October 16, 11am-1pm ET: Additional Optional Office Hours
Day 5 - October 17, 12pm-4pm ET: Pitch Event, Mentor Mixer

The WEPAN Accelerator is a 2021 winner of the Small Business Administration’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. The 2023 WEPAN Accelerator Program Days are co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Technology, Innovation and Partnerships and Translational Impacts (TIP/TI) Directorate.

News

WEPAN Community Survey

As WEPAN continues to grow, we want to gain a deeper understanding of the WEPAN community. Whether you’re a WEPAN member, event attendee, program participant, partner, newsletter subscriber, social media follower, or more – we want to hear from you! Take just five minutes to share more about yourself and your engagement with WEPAN. In addition to providing insights about the WEPAN community, your responses will help also shape our future outreach goals and programming priorities.

Take the survey at: https://www.wepan.org/survey. Your responses will remain confidential and will be for internal use only.

WEPAN Awards Open October 2nd

Save the date! The WEPAN Awards nomination form will open on Monday, October 2.
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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.

The Awards will be presented at the CoNECD conference in February 2024 in Crystal City, Virginia.

Read the press release announcing 2022's award winners.

ACCESS+ Offers a Free DEI Self-Assessment for Professional Societies

The Amplifying the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success (ACCESS+) is excited to offer the Equity Environmental Scanning Tool (EEST) for free under a Creative Commons license. The EEST is a comprehensive DEI self-assessment tool. In addition to assisting professional societies in discerning both strengths and areas for attention, it also centralizes data and provides direction for actionable changes.

“We hope this self-assessment tool will help professional societies with their organizational DEI change work as they determine their areas of growth and strength,” says Dr. Ershela Sims, PI of ACCESS+ and Executive Director of WEPAN.

The EEST is comprised of three sections. The first section is organized according to twelve functional areas that are typical of society operation, such as membership and publishing. The second section asks for information on a series of DEI performance measurement questions for each of the twelve areas. The third section consists of open-ended questions to identify society DEI successes and challenges.

Read the press release and download the EEST at at: https://accessplusstem.com/products/

WEPAN Awards Open October 2nd

Save the date! The WEPAN Awards nomination form will open on Monday, October 2, 2023.

Read the press release announcing last year's award winners.

Job Opportunity: Assistant Director, Office of Outreach and Inclusion, UCI

Under the direction of The Samueli School of Engineering’s Executive Director in the Stacey Nicholas Office of Outreach, Access and Inclusion (OAI), the Assistant Director assists in the oversight of the Office’s recruitment and retention programming and training efforts and the management of broad-based inclusion initiatives. The primary function is to develop and administer programs and initiatives to advance retention, recruitment and outreach efforts focused on graduate and undergraduate students underrepresented in Engineering. These groups include Women, Latino, African-American, Native American and Pacific Islander. Working closely with both the Executive Director and undergraduate students, graduate students, and student club leadership, advance the Office’s mission and vision and monitor and develop strategies to ensure academic excellence.

Feedback for a Book Chapter about WEPAN and WiE Program

Four past WEPAN leaders (Susan Metz, Jane Daniels, and Carol Muller, and Beth Holloway) have been asked to write a chapter about Women in Engineering Programs and WEPAN. This chapter will be included in a book about women in academic computer science and engineering, which fellow WEPAN friend Jenna Carpenter is editing.

Would you help us out by answering a few questions in the below Google Form?

What first interested you in joining WEPAN?
What influence has WEPAN had on you and your work (programs, professional development, leadership development, etc.) ?
If you were to read a chapter about WEPAN and Women in Engineering Programs, what would you most like to see included?

https://forms.gle/SGoa6S4ZCZEUat5C8

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.

"Open-Topic Project-Based Learning and Its Gender-Related Effect on Students’ Exam Performance in Engineering Mechanics" by D. Zhang

"As a learner-centered pedagogy, project-based learning (PBL) is recognized to improve students' engagement and long-term learning effectiveness. The present PBL practices are based on instructor-defined topics and are assigned as a partial or full substitution of traditional assessments. Here, open-topic PBL as an opt-in activity is proposed and was applied to the teaching settings of engineering mechanics. The goal is to promote students' learning outcomes while shaping an inclusive learning environment."

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.‍

Save the Date! Cohort 5 Research Webinars

Sue Rosser, Provost Emerita, San Francisco State University - November 9th, 3pm ET
Erin Winterrowd, Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Regis University - December 13th, 3pm ET

Institutional WEPAN Membership

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

Consider becoming a 30 for 30 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 30 for 30 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 30 for 30 Institutional Member, please email membership@wepan.org.

Get Involved

Committees

We are looking for visionary members to join our committees and influence programming and member experiences. If you are interested in being a member of a WEPAN committee, please complete this survey: https://forms.gle/ZQyijAGNtPYYtNTV9

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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