Front and Center

News from the Director

Welcome, engineers, your week is almost here! National Engineers Week was founded in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers. It falls on the birthday of U.S. President George Washington (born February 22). Not only was Washington the first president of the United States, he was also one of its first engineers. SEAS has expanded the week to two because we have so many great activities planned.

REMEMBER, ALL ARE WELCOME at WiE EVENTS

First up for Engineer’s Week is the annual Frank Howard Lecture on Thursday, February 23rd, 6:30-8:30pm. This year’s speaker is our own, Tenisha (who goes by Ava) Williams, a graduate in 2013. In her presentation, "From Engineering to Equity Warrior: How An Engineering Student Turned Equity Warrior Makes a Difference", Ava shares from her experiences as a first-generation college student pursuing an engineering degree to her corporate career, she spent much of her time serving as one of the only person of color in the room trying to "earn" her seat at the table.
The Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed lecture fund established in 1945 by a gift from its namesake to bring outstanding leaders of science and industry to GW to discuss timely topics in engineering and allied subjects.

RSVP HERE

WiE will celebrate,as usual, with our Edible Car Contest. The contest, which challenges teams to create an edible vehicle that meets technical, aesthetic and culinary requirements. We are honored to have as our judges GW executive chef, Yehuda Malka, GW civil engineering professor, Samar Hamdar, and returning as our head judge is Professor Roger Kaufman.

Don’t miss this exciting, fun-filled event. We will try (no promises) to live stream the action, so watch for a notice on that.

RSVP HERE

For those of you who missed our February “Meet Our Faculty” presentation by EMSE Professor Royce Francis, you are welcome to check out the video.

REMEMBER, ALL ARE WELCOME at WiE EVENTS

With Warm Regards for a safe and healthy winter!

Dr. Shelly Heller

WiE Center Director

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We promised that we would relaunch our mentoring program. We are ready and hope you are. A reminder, our program links SEAS alums with current SEAS sophomore and junior undergraduate students or SEAS graduate students. We try to foster mentoring teams in in the same disciplines and offer mentor. No experience necessary as we will provide mentor training. Please sign up to be a mentor and share the opportunity with your network!

Use this link to apply to be a mentor or mentee.

March is Women’s History Month (Hmm…is there any message in that women get a full month and Engineers only a week or two?).

SEAS Center for Women in Engineering and Development and Alumni Relations proudly presents: HERstory: Decades of GW Women in Engineering on Tuesday, March 21st 6:00-8:00PM. Join us for a lively panel of alumnae leaders, innovators and champions who will share insight and wisdom gained over years of experience in the industry. With over 130 years of experience educating women in STEM, GW Engineering leads the way in narrowing the gender gap. Today, over 40% of our undergraduate population identifies as female. After the discussion, please join us for a reception to connect with fellow alumni and the GW Engineering community.

RSVP HERE

Also coming on Wednesday, March 15th is our webinar on the Imposter Syndrome. We have specifically scheduled this during GW’s spring break in the hopes that both faculty and staff will be a little less ‘booked’ and ready to do something for themselves.

Interested? Use this link to register

February is Black History Month. Black women represent about 13% of the US population but are only about 6% of the engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded in the US. The contributions of women of color in STEM have been downplayed in society and within the industry. These women are innovators and pioneers who have paved the way for many others.

Click here to learn about 50 women of color in STEM that you should know about.

What WiE Are Reading

The issues surrounding faculty evaluations are many and complex. How to interpret the student rankings, rating and comments is not an easy process. A newly featured research paper notes one more complexity: by suggesting that “gender imbalances in departments exacerbate the issue.” Researchers found gender bias in evaluations after “analyzing Clemson University student evaluations of 1,885 tenure-track and non-tenure-track educators from academic year 2018–19.” The new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes a threat to both male and female faculty members’ futures in departments with lopsided numbers of men and women.

A faculty member’s work includes teaching and research AND service, often called “invisible labor”. What constitutes service, how much, who serves are just a few of the issues that swirl around the topic. Fairness of service requirements or assignments is complicated by the fact that some require very little time or effort (the library committee) while some are heavy lifts (faculty senate representatives) and by the fact that often women and under-represented groups are tagged to participate on loads of committees to be sure we are representing diversity. Rafael Walker, a professor of English at Baruch College takes on these issues full force in a fast, thorough and insightful analysis that can be found here.

Should we talk about ChatGPT or let ChatGPTtalk for itself? GW and other instituions are trying to understand how this new tool might impact our teaching and learning. While you are waiting your turn to try ChatGPT, I asked chat gpt to write a squib about women in engineering. Based on the reply below – maybe I should stop writing the newsletter and just keep asking Chat Gpt

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