Diversity Seminar

· Narrative Description:

On Saturday October 2, 1999, the Wichita Section of the Society of Women Engineer’s hosted a seminar on diversity, Dynamic Discovery in Exploring Diversity, with Marcy Harris.

The seminar focused on personal evaluation of biases and attitudes. The Discovering Diversity Profile tool was used to help each participant evaluate himself or herself privately. The scores were tallied and the results were given in each of the tools. Each participant was given an opportunity to comment on the questions and the results. All seemed to be surprised at the results and open to continuing discussions.

Overall the idea of opening ourselves to accepting differences and letting go of the old prejudices was well accepted. Several of the participants wanted additional material to continue learning. We all learned a lot about ourselves, and the path we are taking with regards to diversity.

The seminar provided information that is not normally provided at work or in the workshops at conferences. Marcy had a new approach and method of presentation that provided a new way of looking at diversity and discovering where you were on your path. Marcy also provided a safe and comfortable environment to discuss diversity and our ideas.

A total of 30 people attended the conference, with the Wichita Section making up about a quarter of the class (7 of us went). We did an excellent job of reaching out to the community and getting others involved with SWE. Our Section received many compliments about the seminar and the other activities planned for the year were brought out as well. Several new member packets were given out and the publicity will do well to further our Sections goals this year.

· Advertising:

Stage one advertising was completed by 8/10/99.

Stage One: Have a Web page posting for this event with details

The web page was set up with details added, as they became available. On-line registration was also available for this seminar.

http://www.niar.twsu.edu/swe/diversityclass.html

Have the seminar highlighted (including web address) in Region I Section Newsletters

There is no region I section newsletter, so the diversity seminar announcement and web page address were sent to the surrounding region I section representatives, MAL representatives, and potential sections (OK).

Send Email to student section (WSU, OSU, OU, and TU)

This e-mail was sent to these schools.

Send Email to Wichita Council of Engineering Societies for distribution to other

Engineering Groups

The diversity seminar announcement and web page address were sent to all of the WCES representatives for disbursement to their groups.

Stage two advertising occurred the 2^nd week of September

Stage Two: Contact Wichita Eagle (Newspaper) and schedule two Ads to run in the paper and

also include in announcements in other issues of the Eagle

An add was placed in the Eagle a week prior to the seminar. The seminar was also advertised in the calendar section of the Eagle.

Contact Wichita Business Journal and schedule ad to run in paper

An add was not run in the Wichita Business Journal due to high cost.

Stage three advertising occurred at the end of September

Stage Three: Have a representative attend other Engineering Group meeting and personally invite them to attend.

Suzanne Moore announced the seminar at the WCES meeting in September.

Personal invitations were made to several professional organizations and several engineering firms within the Wichita area.

· Budget- Final

Income		Expense
Grant	$4410	Speaker Fee	$2500
Fees	$252	Diversity Instruments (not to exceed)	$500
		Space for Event	$0
		Lunch	$283.55
		Stationary Supplies/Mailings	$34.98
		Travel Expenses for Speaker (not to exceed)	$300
		Advertising	$336.91



Total Income	$4662	Total Expense	$3955.41
		Balance Remaining	$706.59

· Success Measures

1. Coarse Content

The seminar was very successful. Marcy was an excellent presenter and made the attendees feel very comfortable in dealing with this difficult subject. Each attendee received a course booklet, which contained Marcy’s presentation materials. The hand-out was very useful and can be used as a reference tool long after the seminar is over.

2. Discovering Diversity Profile Tool

Marcy used the Diversity Tool during her seminar. The tool contains 80 questions that are answered with a choice from almost always to almost never. Once the questions are answered, the score is tallied. The purpose of the profile is to help identify your present attitude on workforce diversity. The four areas that are explored, knowledge, understanding, acceptance and behavior are key areas that influence how we respond to workforce diversity. Almost everyone at the seminar was surprised at his or her results from this profile. The results from the profile were used to develop a personal diversity improvement plan.

3. Attendance

The goal for attendance at this seminar was 100. Thirty people attended the seminar and 7 of those were members of SWE – Wichita. A survey of the Wichita Section to determine interest in this type of seminar showed that ¾ would be interested in attending. Only a ¼ of the membership actually attended. Attendance from WSU was also very low, which was very surprising. No one responded from the ad that was placed in the local newspaper. Most of the attendance was due to advertisements at local engineering companies. The low cost of the seminar may actually have caused less attendance, because people thought that it was not a “professional” seminar.

4. Increased Visibility to SWE – Wichita

Most of the attendees for this seminar were not SWE members. Membership packets were given out to several potential members. Feedback was very positive from all attending this seminar.

· Lessons Learned

1. Diversity is a difficult event to publicize, since there is still a lot of resistance to learning more about it. I’m not sure it was realistic to assume that we could get 100 people to attend the event.

2. There was no response from the ad in the Eagle. The money could be better spent in advertising directly to engineering companies within Wichita.

3. No students attended from Wichita State, which was a surprise for all involved in the planning for this event. Response would have been better in the Feb/Mar time frame.

4. The number of people attending this seminar was about perfect. If we had had 100 people attending, this seminar would not have been as effective. I would limit the number of attendees to no more than 50.

Date: 5/15/00

Project Manager: Cindy Hoover Section: I005 - Wichita

Email: cindy.hoover@lsil.com Phone: 316-636-8615

Deliverables: Indicate type (i.e. document, web page, brochure, etc.), title, and media (hard copy, email file, disk, etc.)

Document, DR062FinalReport.Doc, e-mail file

Select[1] the one primary Strategic Priorty this project addressed:
Diversity

SWE Committees to which this report and deliverables would be of interest:

[1] To enter an "X" in any of the boxes on this page, type a "6" in place of the box.