The SWE Graduate Community would like to recognize GradSWE Illinois with a GradSWE Established Group Award for their continued commitment to the SWE Core Value of Mutual Support by fostering a supportive environment and opportunities for networking throughout their programming, specifically the Women Empowered in STEM (weSTEM) Conference.
Established in 2012, GradsWE Illinois was started by a group of female graduate students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to promote diversity in graduate education in STEM. The group has continued to evolve over the years to meet the changing needs of the graduate student community.
In their words:
We also fundraise so that we can send our members to the WE national conference. This conference provides professional opportunities for GradSWE members to network. Each year our graduate students obtain internships and jobs through the conference career fair. Due to the virtual climate of the WE20 conference, we were able to fund thirty GradSWE members. This coming year at WE21 we will fund ten GradSWE members.
As Illinois GradSWE’s flagship event, Women Empowered in STEM (weSTEM) is a one-day conference designed to provide a forum for women to inspire one another to be leaders and unique contributors throughout their careers. Despite constraints introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are proud to have hosted the ninth annual weSTEM Conference virtually using Gather.town and Zoom. Although we shifted to be virtual, over 100 graduate students from various programs around the country attended, including a record number of non-Illinois graduate students (45 students). 20 speakers and 7 corporate sponsor representatives shared their paths in relation to the conference theme “We rise by lifting others” through keynote talks, lectures, panels, and networking opportunities. The weSTEM Gather.town platform, built by Illinois GradSWE committee members, was designed to maintain face-to-face networking and discussion sessions typically offered during the in-person conference. Conference attendees moved their avatar throughout the space and could video chat with other attendees by walking up to them just as you would in an in-person conference. Keynote talks and lectures were hosted on Zoom, and all attendees have access to the recordings (a feature previously unavailable for in-person conferences), allowing them to view all lectures that occurred simultaneously. Amongst other topics, we had speakers present about perfectionism, work-life balance, making a difference, career pivots and opportunities, resiliency during uncertain times, and impostor syndrome. The weSTEM Conference was made possible by sponsorship from various university academic departments as well as many corporate sponsors including Exponent, Caterpillar, and Ramboll.
Established in 2012, GradsWE Illinois was started by a group of female graduate students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to promote diversity in graduate education in STEM. The group has continued to evolve over the years to meet the changing needs of the graduate student community.
In their words:
We also fundraise so that we can send our members to the WE national conference. This conference provides professional opportunities for GradSWE members to network. Each year our graduate students obtain internships and jobs through the conference career fair. Due to the virtual climate of the WE20 conference, we were able to fund thirty GradSWE members. This coming year at WE21 we will fund ten GradSWE members.
As Illinois GradSWE’s flagship event, Women Empowered in STEM (weSTEM) is a one-day conference designed to provide a forum for women to inspire one another to be leaders and unique contributors throughout their careers. Despite constraints introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are proud to have hosted the ninth annual weSTEM Conference virtually using Gather.town and Zoom. Although we shifted to be virtual, over 100 graduate students from various programs around the country attended, including a record number of non-Illinois graduate students (45 students). 20 speakers and 7 corporate sponsor representatives shared their paths in relation to the conference theme “We rise by lifting others” through keynote talks, lectures, panels, and networking opportunities. The weSTEM Gather.town platform, built by Illinois GradSWE committee members, was designed to maintain face-to-face networking and discussion sessions typically offered during the in-person conference. Conference attendees moved their avatar throughout the space and could video chat with other attendees by walking up to them just as you would in an in-person conference. Keynote talks and lectures were hosted on Zoom, and all attendees have access to the recordings (a feature previously unavailable for in-person conferences), allowing them to view all lectures that occurred simultaneously. Amongst other topics, we had speakers present about perfectionism, work-life balance, making a difference, career pivots and opportunities, resiliency during uncertain times, and impostor syndrome. The weSTEM Conference was made possible by sponsorship from various university academic departments as well as many corporate sponsors including Exponent, Caterpillar, and Ramboll.
In an effort to facilitate GradSWE at Illinois, we elect a committee each year. The committee works to raise and allocate funding, coordinate our weSTEM conference, advertise our organization to our members and campus communities, plan social events, and provide an engaging lunch series. Our committee is composed of a Committee Chair, Funding Coordinator, Treasurer, Secretary, Outreach Coordinator, Lunch Coordinator, Publicity Coordinator, Social Coordinator, and WeSTEM Director, WeSTEM Attendee Relations Coordinator, WeSTEM Speaker Coordinator, WeSTEM , Publicity Coordinator, and weSTEM Logistics Coordinator. Each member of our committee completes their assigned tasks alongside their responsibilities as a graduate student. Our inclusive and encouraging environment strives to meet the needs of our campus community, adapting each year to stay relevant and engaging. Following elections, committee members complete transition meetings with their corresponding senior committee members. After transitioning, we meet for a Committee Retreat to reflect on last year’s achievements and failures in effort to develop a cohesive vision for the coming year. Throughout the school year the committee continues to meet on a biweekly basis at committee meetings. These meetings provide the opportunity to share progress, gain advice or provide assistance. Committee members also have the ability to develop a subcommittee of additional graduate students. These subcommittees provide our committee members an outlet to enhance their delegation and leadership skills.
Social events are organized to bring the GradSWE community closer, often being the cradle for new friendships within the community. They typically include interactive events which would have everyone participating, but it was a challenge to keep the spirit of social events up while maintaining social distance protocols. Virtual events like game nights, virtual thematic get-togethers, and socially distanced events like exchanging wellness baskets and organizing biking tours were some of the new ways the GradSWE community had to improvise to replace the former events.
This year, the Social Chair offered a list of events and based on the interest of the GradSWE members, chose an event for every month. These events are publicized using the GradSWEekly email and social media accounts. Virtual events typically draw about three to fifteen attendees.
Social events are an outlet for graduate students to interact with students outside their field of work, but more importantly, an opportunity for members to check on each other’s well-being, and support one another, during a universally difficult time marked with prolonged periods of isolation. They provide a space for graduate students at every level to share their world and form new friendships. This year, social events became one of the limited ways for new graduate students to find out and explore resources available on campus and interact with other students. The GradSWE social events encourage safe social interaction, which strengthens the entire community.
GradSWE lunches are an impactful event series for members at the University of Illinois. The goal of these lunches is to bring members together to have discussions about a variety of personal and professional development topics. We enrich the experience by bringing in experts from across campus to inspire attendees to think about topics in a new light and walk away with new tools to inform decisions in the workplace and beyond. This year we have plans to host 15 virtual lunches, a milestone that exceeds previous years despite the online format. Attendees are approximately 1/3 Master’s students and 2/3 PhD students, coming to us from nearly every engineering department as well as physics, chemistry, and more. Topics this year have covered everything from research and career oriented talks like “Acing the Interview,” “Project to Publication,” and “Building an Online Research Profile” to personal well-being topics like “Staying Fit in a Frantic World,” and “Healthy Relationships,” to topics that focus on soft-skills that can be used in all parts of life like “Financial Negotiation,” “Using Leadership to Empower Women,” and “Cultural Significance in Personal Identity.” These lunches also provide an opportunity to connect with industry; this year we are hosting two recruiting lunches. Finally, lunches are a great place for members to get to know each other better, acting as professional networking and community support opportunities. Despite the online limitations, over 50 individuals have attended lunches this year, and many are regular attendees at all lunches.
Each year in May, GradSWE hosts a 'Graduation Celebration Lunch' to recognize the degree-earning or graduating members of our organization. This lunch highlights and acknowledges the accomplishments of the students earning Masters and Doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois. We recognize the students that are graduating and leaving campus, but we also recognize those that have earned a Master’s degree and are staying to complete a doctoral degree. We believe it is important to celebrate each individual's accomplishments. This provides positive recognition for the degree-earning students' hard work in graduate school and also provides an opportunity for our members to come together one last time before summer. We also recognize the GradSWE members that have served on the committee and will either be stepping down from a leadership role to focus on completing their degree or are graduating and leaving campus. It is important to recognize and thank the students that step up to serve GradSWE in a leadership capacity.
The outreach events organized by GradSWE were fully virtual for the year of 2020-2021. The outreach committee this year consisted of two outreach coordinators and four sub- committee members. The main goal for the outreach subcommittee was to engage GradSWE with the local Urbana-Champaign community during this challenging time. Therefore, the planned events for this school year were aimed to positively impact the local community, especially young girls from K-12. As most schools have gone virtual this year, we aimed to provide more science based educational activities for kids. With this goal in mind, we created a virtual science experiment series, "Jump into Science", in collaboration with the Urbana Free Library. We have hosted three virtual experiments for this year: “Water Filter”, “Kinetic Sand”, and “Surface tension”. For each experiment, we distributed about 20 experimental kits to the participants through the library where they were quarantined for a week before distribution. The outreach subcommittee members also prepared instruction sheets and presentation slides to discuss the scientific merits and the broader impacts of each topic. The purpose of this discussion was to improve students' scientific thinking skills and emphasize the relevance of science in our lives. We had about 15-20 participants, and each of our volunteers and subcommittee members were divided into three breakout rooms on Zoom to do the hands-on experiment with the kids. These events have allowed the GradSWE members and volunteers to encourage young girls to experience science and participate in scientific discussion safely from their homes.
For more information on the weSTEM Conference, check out the weSTEM website.
Social events are organized to bring the GradSWE community closer, often being the cradle for new friendships within the community. They typically include interactive events which would have everyone participating, but it was a challenge to keep the spirit of social events up while maintaining social distance protocols. Virtual events like game nights, virtual thematic get-togethers, and socially distanced events like exchanging wellness baskets and organizing biking tours were some of the new ways the GradSWE community had to improvise to replace the former events.
This year, the Social Chair offered a list of events and based on the interest of the GradSWE members, chose an event for every month. These events are publicized using the GradSWEekly email and social media accounts. Virtual events typically draw about three to fifteen attendees.
Social events are an outlet for graduate students to interact with students outside their field of work, but more importantly, an opportunity for members to check on each other’s well-being, and support one another, during a universally difficult time marked with prolonged periods of isolation. They provide a space for graduate students at every level to share their world and form new friendships. This year, social events became one of the limited ways for new graduate students to find out and explore resources available on campus and interact with other students. The GradSWE social events encourage safe social interaction, which strengthens the entire community.
GradSWE lunches are an impactful event series for members at the University of Illinois. The goal of these lunches is to bring members together to have discussions about a variety of personal and professional development topics. We enrich the experience by bringing in experts from across campus to inspire attendees to think about topics in a new light and walk away with new tools to inform decisions in the workplace and beyond. This year we have plans to host 15 virtual lunches, a milestone that exceeds previous years despite the online format. Attendees are approximately 1/3 Master’s students and 2/3 PhD students, coming to us from nearly every engineering department as well as physics, chemistry, and more. Topics this year have covered everything from research and career oriented talks like “Acing the Interview,” “Project to Publication,” and “Building an Online Research Profile” to personal well-being topics like “Staying Fit in a Frantic World,” and “Healthy Relationships,” to topics that focus on soft-skills that can be used in all parts of life like “Financial Negotiation,” “Using Leadership to Empower Women,” and “Cultural Significance in Personal Identity.” These lunches also provide an opportunity to connect with industry; this year we are hosting two recruiting lunches. Finally, lunches are a great place for members to get to know each other better, acting as professional networking and community support opportunities. Despite the online limitations, over 50 individuals have attended lunches this year, and many are regular attendees at all lunches.
Each year in May, GradSWE hosts a 'Graduation Celebration Lunch' to recognize the degree-earning or graduating members of our organization. This lunch highlights and acknowledges the accomplishments of the students earning Masters and Doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois. We recognize the students that are graduating and leaving campus, but we also recognize those that have earned a Master’s degree and are staying to complete a doctoral degree. We believe it is important to celebrate each individual's accomplishments. This provides positive recognition for the degree-earning students' hard work in graduate school and also provides an opportunity for our members to come together one last time before summer. We also recognize the GradSWE members that have served on the committee and will either be stepping down from a leadership role to focus on completing their degree or are graduating and leaving campus. It is important to recognize and thank the students that step up to serve GradSWE in a leadership capacity.
The outreach events organized by GradSWE were fully virtual for the year of 2020-2021. The outreach committee this year consisted of two outreach coordinators and four sub- committee members. The main goal for the outreach subcommittee was to engage GradSWE with the local Urbana-Champaign community during this challenging time. Therefore, the planned events for this school year were aimed to positively impact the local community, especially young girls from K-12. As most schools have gone virtual this year, we aimed to provide more science based educational activities for kids. With this goal in mind, we created a virtual science experiment series, "Jump into Science", in collaboration with the Urbana Free Library. We have hosted three virtual experiments for this year: “Water Filter”, “Kinetic Sand”, and “Surface tension”. For each experiment, we distributed about 20 experimental kits to the participants through the library where they were quarantined for a week before distribution. The outreach subcommittee members also prepared instruction sheets and presentation slides to discuss the scientific merits and the broader impacts of each topic. The purpose of this discussion was to improve students' scientific thinking skills and emphasize the relevance of science in our lives. We had about 15-20 participants, and each of our volunteers and subcommittee members were divided into three breakout rooms on Zoom to do the hands-on experiment with the kids. These events have allowed the GradSWE members and volunteers to encourage young girls to experience science and participate in scientific discussion safely from their homes.
For more information on the weSTEM Conference, check out the weSTEM website.
