Recruitment - Region D Best Practices

eSWAMP Day (D058, University of Florida): It is a recruitment program that helps incoming female engineering students transition into the college. We informed them about student involvement in the college and included a mini student organization fair with representatives with over ten College of Engineering societies. Participants received academic insight with student and faculty panels. Career Showcase guidance for professional development by a career resource representative. Speakers attended and included the Dean of the College and the faculty advisor of our section. And with icebreaker games and the Big Gator Little Gator Mentoring program kick off, students were able to network and begin a friendships by the first week of attending the college. This event was held the first Saturday after classes at Lake Wauberg with buses provided to transport them from the university campus and the facilities.

Tea with the Dean (D061, Georgia Tech): GT SWE along with the GT College of Engineering (COE) hosted a Welcome Tea Party for all incoming female engineers (freshmen, transfer and faculty). The COE wants to recruit and retain women at Georgia Tech and came to GT SWE for help. We decided to do something big for all these incredible women who were about to embark their engineering journeys at Georgia Tech. That is when we came up with the idea of welcoming them to the Georgia Tech community with a “Southern Hospitality” approach and decided to host a Tea Party. Formal Invitations were sent to their house during the summer after they had accepted to attend Georgia Tech (all engineering majors including Undecided).Our event was called Tea with the Dean, where the Dean of Engineering Don P. Giddens was our honored guest. The chairs of many of the engineering schools, advisors, faculty and administrators were also in attendance. More importantly, we had a great student turn out. They each received a complimentary Tea Cup that had the theme “Engineers turn dreams into reality” printed on the saucer and the SWE logo on the Tea Cup. We had a slideshow that honored our women faculty, displayed their achievements and made them look more approachable. SWE members helped facilitate conversation between the freshman and faculty. They received a T-shirt for their work. We played a BINGO game to help with conversation starters and also had “Tea Party” themed door prizes. The event took place at our new College of Advanced Computing Building. We had Rafedies Catering Company cater the event with Tea and Hors d'œuvres for our guests.We know have increased our new members to 180 due to the face time we had with a lot of incoming women, who are now active and very involved members. A good amount of these Freshmen girls are now chairs of committees with GT SWE.