Sylvie Spraakman
I am happy to announce that the newest GradSWE community has launched: GradSWE at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada. We started up in September with the beginning of term, and now it’s December, it’s time to take stock of how far we’ve come and start some planning for the next phase. In this post, I’ll talk about our story so far. I’d love to hear back from other groups that have started up. Does this experience resonate with you? What would you like to share with other groups about the start-up phase?
The call
I decided to form GradSWE after I joined SWE Toronto, my local professional affiliate. (For American folks, we don’t have “sections”, we have “affiliates”, and Toronto is one of the many SWE international professional affiliate. Even though we don’t think of ourselves as so different from our American colleagues in terms of work and educational cultures, we have a different currency and legislation of the profession, and therefore our setup is considered “international”.) The leadership of SWE Toronto wanted to do more to reach out to university students, to let them know they can join SWE Toronto when they start working. I signed up to fill that role. In chatting with fellow board members, I learned that SWE Toronto volunteers felt a need to have something that supported women after they left university (we all go to “universities” in Canada to study engineering, not colleges). It felt like there was so much support in school, and they didn’t feel that same level of support in the working world. I felt the same about graduate school. Graduate school is also very isolating, and it’s hard to build a sense of community. From those needs, and after doing some research and finding out about GradSWE across universities in the United States, I felt like this was something I could put forward into my own university.
First, I gathered a few people who were interested from my own network, and we made a small executive team, and we applied for official club status. Next, I put out a call to all of the engineering graduate students to come to an organizing meeting at a specific time and date. The Vice-Dean of Graduates Studies in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Julie Audet, supported us from the get-go and facilitated putting out this call.
The first meeting
I didn’t know how many people to expect – but more than 40 people showed up! It was exciting! I clearly had underestimated the need, because the room I had booked did not have enough chairs for everyone. After our executive team spoke about our vision for the group, we divided up into “working groups” around specific topics or ideas, and each group had a facilitator. We collected names and emails. We got people to work right away on creating a newsletter, social media sites, and to start gathering information on funding possibilities for our event ideas. We now had more people stepping up to take leadership, by taking on key components of the group.
I am happy to announce that the newest GradSWE community has launched: GradSWE at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada. We started up in September with the beginning of term, and now it’s December, it’s time to take stock of how far we’ve come and start some planning for the next phase. In this post, I’ll talk about our story so far. I’d love to hear back from other groups that have started up. Does this experience resonate with you? What would you like to share with other groups about the start-up phase?
The call
I decided to form GradSWE after I joined SWE Toronto, my local professional affiliate. (For American folks, we don’t have “sections”, we have “affiliates”, and Toronto is one of the many SWE international professional affiliate. Even though we don’t think of ourselves as so different from our American colleagues in terms of work and educational cultures, we have a different currency and legislation of the profession, and therefore our setup is considered “international”.) The leadership of SWE Toronto wanted to do more to reach out to university students, to let them know they can join SWE Toronto when they start working. I signed up to fill that role. In chatting with fellow board members, I learned that SWE Toronto volunteers felt a need to have something that supported women after they left university (we all go to “universities” in Canada to study engineering, not colleges). It felt like there was so much support in school, and they didn’t feel that same level of support in the working world. I felt the same about graduate school. Graduate school is also very isolating, and it’s hard to build a sense of community. From those needs, and after doing some research and finding out about GradSWE across universities in the United States, I felt like this was something I could put forward into my own university.
First, I gathered a few people who were interested from my own network, and we made a small executive team, and we applied for official club status. Next, I put out a call to all of the engineering graduate students to come to an organizing meeting at a specific time and date. The Vice-Dean of Graduates Studies in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Julie Audet, supported us from the get-go and facilitated putting out this call.
The first meeting
I didn’t know how many people to expect – but more than 40 people showed up! It was exciting! I clearly had underestimated the need, because the room I had booked did not have enough chairs for everyone. After our executive team spoke about our vision for the group, we divided up into “working groups” around specific topics or ideas, and each group had a facilitator. We collected names and emails. We got people to work right away on creating a newsletter, social media sites, and to start gathering information on funding possibilities for our event ideas. We now had more people stepping up to take leadership, by taking on key components of the group.
Our first meeting – we ran out of chairs!
The cascade
Everything really started falling into place after that first meeting. A core team of volunteers solidified. We connected with other groups who had more resources to run small events. We connected with professors who vocalized their excitement and support for us. Now we’re at a point where our team is smaller, but actively working on projects. Our next need is better group governance and formality. After the holiday break, we are going to have a visioning and strategic planning session.
Taking part in our community
December 6 is an important day across Canada, and it speaks in particular to women in engineering. On December 6, 1989, a man entered École Polytechnique in Montreal, and killed 14 engineering students. This was a targeted killing against “feminists” studying engineering. This day stands out to me personally, because when I read about these women and the event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre), I see myself in them. They were students, attending class, preparing for exams, doing end of term presentations.
For the 30th anniversary of the massacre, our school hosted a lunch and rose-laying ceremony. We had undergraduate and graduate engineering students volunteer to take one white rose for each woman who was a victim that day. I took a rose representing Michele Richard, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student. It was such an honour to be part of the ceremony, and so wonderful of the community at UofT to include GradSWE UofT in the event.
Everything really started falling into place after that first meeting. A core team of volunteers solidified. We connected with other groups who had more resources to run small events. We connected with professors who vocalized their excitement and support for us. Now we’re at a point where our team is smaller, but actively working on projects. Our next need is better group governance and formality. After the holiday break, we are going to have a visioning and strategic planning session.
Taking part in our community
December 6 is an important day across Canada, and it speaks in particular to women in engineering. On December 6, 1989, a man entered École Polytechnique in Montreal, and killed 14 engineering students. This was a targeted killing against “feminists” studying engineering. This day stands out to me personally, because when I read about these women and the event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre), I see myself in them. They were students, attending class, preparing for exams, doing end of term presentations.
For the 30th anniversary of the massacre, our school hosted a lunch and rose-laying ceremony. We had undergraduate and graduate engineering students volunteer to take one white rose for each woman who was a victim that day. I took a rose representing Michele Richard, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student. It was such an honour to be part of the ceremony, and so wonderful of the community at UofT to include GradSWE UofT in the event.
Women with white roses stand, representing the
Montreal massacre victims.
Montreal massacre victims.
Rose laying in remembrance of the 14 women
killed on December 6, 1989, and victims of
gender-based violence everywhere.
killed on December 6, 1989, and victims of
gender-based violence everywhere.
Going forward
As the term draws to a close, our activities are winding down. We are having a skating social before the term is over, and then we will all be off until the winter starts on January 6. We hope to come back in a very exciting way. We will work on formalizing our group – creating a constitution and volunteer roles with titles. We will also host a panel event for female engineering professors in March.
I think it will be really important that we begin to think about what kind of community we would like to become. This is governance work that can be a bit hard, messy and tedious. I want to think deeply about how we make sure that we are championing diversity in all its forms, not just gender. How do we make this a truly welcoming space? What kind of processes and codes do we need to do?
As the term draws to a close, our activities are winding down. We are having a skating social before the term is over, and then we will all be off until the winter starts on January 6. We hope to come back in a very exciting way. We will work on formalizing our group – creating a constitution and volunteer roles with titles. We will also host a panel event for female engineering professors in March.
I think it will be really important that we begin to think about what kind of community we would like to become. This is governance work that can be a bit hard, messy and tedious. I want to think deeply about how we make sure that we are championing diversity in all its forms, not just gender. How do we make this a truly welcoming space? What kind of processes and codes do we need to do?
