The Carnegie Mellon collegiate section of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), established in 1977 by Hilda Diamond of Biomedical Engineering, is an educational, service, and social organization that was established. The group is well-known throughout campus for hosting long-standing events, including the Technical Opportunities Conference (TOC) and various educational outreach programs for students in grades K-12.

SWE reinstated an old CIT tradition with their celebration of National Engineers’ Week (E-Week). In its second year, CMU’s celebration has earned the group received national recognition from the professional members of the Society of Women Engineers. The Society developed the plan to reinstate E-Week festivities after learning of the success of similar events at other universities while some of its members were attending the SWE Regional Conference in 2005. SWE approached the CIT Dean’s Office with a proposed list of events in late 2005 and the Dean’s Office has been co-hosting the week’s celebrations ever since.

Events held throughout the week were designed to allow Carnegie Mellon students to showcase their talents and knowledge. SWE’s “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” provided over 30 girls in grades 9-12 with a chance to shadow Carnegie Mellon engineering students and to discover the opportunities that could be made available to them by pursuing an engineering degree. Students showcased a variety of hands-on class projects designed to promote science and engineering to young people including a chemical car race, tracking satellites and wearable computers designed to help U.S. Marines plot strategic locations. The displays are manned by Carnegie Mellon faculty who will give hands-on demonstrations ranging from using lego building blocks to demonstrate basic mechanical engineering principles to a bone tissue engineering exercise.

SWE joined together with thirteen engineering and technological societies and organizations from the university to present an Engineering Family Carnival for families in the Pittsburgh community. Each organization hosted its own engineering-related, interactive booth. In addition, other events included a lecture from Vice Provost of Education, Indira Nair, a pinewood derby hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and a breakfast for students each day hosted by the primary departments of CIT.

Social activities included an ice cream social sponsored by Morgan Stanley and hosted by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and the annual SWE Ball, a formal university-wide dance held at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association.

A new addition to this year’s events, was the Mr. Engineer competition. One male contestant from each engineering department, as well as one CIT first-year representative, vied with one another for the title of Mr. Engineer 2007. In a fun, pageant-style contest, CIT faculty and staff served as the panel of judges. Each contestant was required to participate in each of three rounds, a talent round, a Q&A round, and a round in which contestants modeled duct tapes that they had “engineered” from duct tape prior to the competition. At the end of the night, Mr. ECE, Bowei Gai, donned the first-ever Mr. Engineer crown.

The Society of Women Engineers welcomes participation and membership among engineering students. For more information, visit the SWE website.

Contributed by Susan Frankiewicz