Agilent Technologies has stopped funding its Agilent AfterSchool outreach kits. The current price ($4/kit) will only be honored for the remaining 100 kits of each type (there are 21 kits total).

If you want to use Agilent AfterSchool Kits as outreach for your section, order them fast before they’re all gone!

Once these 100 are sold out, only the most popular 7 kits will be available, at a 300% price increase ($22/kit).

When you’re holding really big outreach events, you might need a Certificate of Insurance. They make sure that SWE doesn’t go bankrupt if something goes wrong at the event. You should get a COI if your event meets any of the following criteria:

1. Length of 3 or more days
2. Overnight stay
3. Expected attendance of 100+ people
4. Outdoor event
5. Alcohol served
6. Children under 18 years of age attending
7. Inadequate student to chaperone ratio (varies –
   depending on age of children)
8. Day camp

In the past, our insurance company would pay the overage if the cost of insurance went over our set amount.
This year, they’re stopping.

If your event needs a Certificate of Insurance, you now need to get  an estimate, and your section will have to pay any extra charges (~ $0.50 per girl, for events of 100+ people). But every event is different, and you might have to pay less, or even nothing!

To obtain additional insurance, you should contact Michael Chan at SWE HQ (hq@swe.gov) and submit a form to get an estimate of additional insurance cost. Do this early, because your outreach chair needs to account for this fee in their event budget.

Life lesson: to avoid insurance fees, don’t hold dangerous outreach events.

Congratulations to this year’s Regional Award Winners!

Collegiate Emerging Leader: Christina Saunders (Purdue)

Outstanding Collegiate Section

• Winner: Iowa State University
• Honorable Mention: Bradley University
• Honorable Mention: University of Michigan – Ann Arbor

Collegiate membership growth award

• Large – Winner: Iowa State +162%
• Large – Honorable Mention: U of Michigan – Ann Arbor +52%
• Medium – Winner: IUPUI +306%
• Medium – Honorable Mention: U of North Dakota +113%
• Small – Winner: Indiana Purdue Univ Fort Wayne +280%
• Small – Honorable Mention: Region H MALs

Membership retention award

• Large – Winner: Iowa State 74%
• Large – Honorable Mention: U of Wisconsin-Madison 67%
• Medium – Winner: Marquette 70%
• Medium – Honorable Mention: U of North Dakota 69%
• Medium – Honorable Mention: Michigan Tech 69%
• Small – Winner: Northern Illinois U
• Small – Honorable Mention: Indiana Purdue Univ Fort Wayne

Members-At-Large by region

Region H has largest number of Members-At-Large in SWE: 176! Members-at-Large are professional members who don’t live in the boundaries of an official section. Most of our MALs are in Indiana and Michigan.

If your section is a little far away from your closest professional section, don’t despair! There are three new professinal sections in the formative stages!

• Southwestern Indiana
• Another section in Iowa
• South-Central Michigan

I just found out that SWE co-published a book last year: Becoming Leaders, about how women can make good career choices. Its purpose is to help you develop leadership self-awareness. It’s a great resource for your section. Pick up a copy and keep it in your office for light reading during office hours!

Becoming Leaders is available to the public for $29.00 on the ASCE web site, but SWE members can get an awesome 20% discount! Purchase it through the SWE member store for only $23.

From the dust jacket:

So, you are a woman chasing a successful career in engineering, science, or technology. You may be prepared to work hard for this, but you must also work “smart”.  Becoming Leaders is about working smart – and about making the choices that are right for you, your talents, and your life, wherever you are in your career.

Williams and Emerson gathered the best research in many different fields to present important, timely results alongside practical tips collected from women who are enjoying successful careers.  Chapters mix and match, with one set of chapters most appropriate for students, another for graduates, and another for women mid-career.  Written both to support career success and to encourage leadership self-awareness, Becoming Leaders is a book you’ll turn to again and again, for advice, for information, and – most of all – for inspiration.

Becoming Leaders was co-authored with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

On December 1st, all your members who haven’t paid their dues from last year will disappear from the database, and your section’s membership count will plummet.

Pass these instructions along to your new members to make sure their registration gets counted.

You have a new username!

Your username has changed since last year; it’s no longer a 20-billion-digit number. If you’re not sure what your new username is, click https://ams.swe.org/swessa/ssaauthmain.forget_password to find it. An email with your username and password should arrive shortly. If your e-mail address is not recognized, you will have to apply for a new membership.

Registration Instructions

Click here to register as a National SWE member! Just follow these easy steps:

• Select Collegiate and New Member or Former Member and click Continue.
• Select SWE Collegiate Member Dues
• Enter the following required information in the form.
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Home Address
  • Home City
  • Home Postal Code
  • Phone Number
  • Email
  • You must create and save at least one Education record.
• All other fields are optional; enter any or no optional information.
• Click Continue.
• Enter your credit card information and click Submit.

Thanks to Iowa State University for these instructions!

Your IRS Form 990 E-Postcard is due November 15th.
This form makes sure that your section still exists and still wants to be a non-profit.

Every section needs to complete one.

Your section needs to either:

• Be your own registered non-profit, and add yourself as a subordinate organization under SWE’s umbrella
• Have permission from your university to use their non-profit EIN number

To download detailed instructions on how to fill out this E-Postcard, click here.

Right now, the only schools who are their own registered non-profit are:

• H053 Kettering University – A
• H061 University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
• H066 University of Minnesota
• H079 Western Michigan University
• H080 University of Wisconsin – Madison
• H083 Valparaiso University
• H092 Indiana Technological Univesity
• H093 Grand Valley State University
• H095 Kettering University – B
• H096 University of Wisconsin – Stout

These schools need to email the SWE Finance Chair to make sure their section is a subordinate organization under SWE’s group tax exemption.

Everyone else needs to follow the instructions linked above to either register their own IRS EIN number or obtain permission to use their university’s.

Your section can host a “Wow! That’s Engineering!” event, fully sponsored by SWE! SWE will also help you plan your event! Send in your application by December 1st!

Wow! That’s Engineering! is a half-day workshop for middle- and high-school girls. They learn about the creativity and innovation of engineering through hands-on activities and interaction with SWE members. This event is fantastic for collegiate sections with great ideas, but who might not have the funding or manpower to plan such a large event on their own.

To see what exactly “Wow! That’s Engineering!” is, check out its Event In A Box page, or see some photos from the Boston event in May.

If you have questions, contact Randy Freedman at randy.freedman@swe.org.

Jessica Wood, Outstanding Collegiate Award Recipient

Congratulations to our Region H Individual Award Winners from WE09!

Distinguished New Engineer:

• Tricia Walker (Heart of Iowa)
• Diane LaFortune (Chicago Regional)

Emerging Leader:

• Amy Benecke McLaren, P.E. (Central Illinois)
• Julie Rolffs (Central Illinois)

Outstanding Collegiate Member:

• Jessica Wood (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Outstanding Collegiate Member Awards are given to collegiate members with at least 2 years of SWE membership and who have made an outstanding contribution to SWE, the engineering community, and their campus. A maximum of five awards will be given annually. You need to be nominated for this award. Nominations are due on March 31st to the Awards Chair. More information is available by clicking here.

The video SWE members made in the Lava Lounge at WE09 is finally up on YouTube!
Participants were asked to discuss why they became an engineer and how they defined success.
It’s a great film, and they showed it at the end of the Celebrate SWE! Banquet.

EDIT: Sorry girls, I thought the video had embedded. My bad. Here’s a link!

Watch the video here!