Socials - Region D Best Practices

SWEet Tooth Social (D057, Duke University): Our annual SWEet Tooth Social is part of our SWE Buddies program, which can be described as follows:  SWE obtains a list of email addresses for the entire incoming class of freshmen women engineering majors from the Dean’s Office.  The list of emails is divided among several SWE upperclassmen.  Each upperclassmen emails her group of “SWE buddies” to introduce herself and volunteer to answer any questions about dorm life, engineering, campus dining, etc.  Many of the incoming freshmen do respond to these emails, so this is a great way to welcome them to Duke and let them know about SWE.  We have our SWEet Tooth Social within the first week of classes.  This event takes place in the Linux computer cluster located on East Campus (where all freshmen reside).  It is pretty much a homework help session where prospective SWE members can drop in and meet their upperclassmen SWE buddies.  We have plenty of cookies, cupcakes, etc to give them extra incentive to stop by.  This year we also had our upperclassmen host “SWE Marketplace Dinners”at the freshmen dining hall (known as the Marketplace).  Doing this gives SWE buddies another opportunity to network.  We’ve found that by having the SWEet Tooth Social and SWE Dinners, we can meet the freshmen face-to-face rather than just through email.