Sarah

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone had a fantastic week! I really have to get better at this posting during the week, don’t I? I’ll work on that for this week. It’s been a crazy week, which I’m guessing since we only have 4 weeks of class left, every week will be crazy. This past week was my psychology test, this coming week is my calculus test, and the next week is my chemistry test. My plan is to take each test as it comes. Devote the whole week to that subject (hopefully not at the expense of the other subjects).

Last weekend kicked off the busy week with Society of Women Engineers (SWE)’s High School Conference. Basically, SWE hosts an event where high school girls can come learn about engineering and about what University of Iowa offers to engineering students. They sign-in Friday afternoon in the engineering building, followed by ice breakers to get to know everybody.

 

After sign-in and ice breakers, the girls were taken to one of the classrooms to learn more about Society of Women Engineers(SWE) and Women in Science and Engineering(WiSE).

Then we had breakout sessions where the girls picked a type of engineering to learn more about. After a 20 minute info session, they switched to another one. In the info sessions, the high school girls could ask questions about anything involving the major, engineering, or college in general. The SWE girls leading the session talked about classes and focus areas.

 

 

I didn’t make it to all the info session but they had all of the engineering types covered.

After the info sessions was dinner. We had Jimmy John’s subs and chips. The high school girls had the opportunity to talk to some professional women over dinner.

After dinner, there was a panelist of professional women to talk about the careers in engineering. The high school girls could ask anything they wanted about education, classes, internships, and careers in engineering.

After the professional panel, the girls had another type of panel come in. They had to guess which guys were engineers by asking questions like “How much time do you spend studying?” The guys were good at disguising their answers.

Then it was time for dessert! Does this look familiar? The girls got to make ice cream in a bag, just like my chemical engineering seminar did.

We even got to make liquid Nitrogen ice cream again! The girls thought it was pretty cool too.

The night ended with the girls making the trek from the Seamans Center to the WiSE floor in the residence hall to spend the night with the WiSE girls. The WiSE girls played games and just hung out with the high school girls until they all went to bed(somewhere around 2 or 3am).

The conference was a lot of fun (not much sleep) and it was awesome to meet some of the girls who will hopefully be on the WiSE floor next year. The really cool part was that exactly one year before, I was in the same seats as the high school girls. I attended the SWE high school conference last year after I had made my final decision on where to go to college. I decided it would be the ultimate test. I would be on my own on campus, without my parents. Several girls that attended the conference with me even ended up in some of my classes, which was really cool. It was so nice to get to college and recognize a few faces. I was also able to recognize upperclassmen SWE and WiSE girls from the conference. After attending the conference and having such a great experience, it was awesome to help out and give other girls the same great experience. Just one of the awesome giving back volunteer opportunities of college! 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Monday, April 15th, 2013 at 8:27 am and is filed under Events, General, Photos, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.