WEPAN Newsletter March 2023

Register for the 2023 ADVANCE EiSCC

Registration is now open for the 2023 ADVANCE Equity in STEM Community Convening! Take advantage of early bird registration (a $50 discount) until April 15, 2023 at 11:59 pm PT.

This year, we are also offering a virtual attendee option. Virtual attendees will have access to the live streamed plenary sessions (through the event app). Additionally, virtual attendees have event app access for networking, viewing presenter materials, and using other features. Discounts do not apply to registration for virtual attendance.

The complimentary annual conference registrations that are a part of institutional memberships will be applied to this conference. WEPAN members receive a $150 discount that is stackable with early bird registration, for a total savings of $200 off the general registration price.

A set of codes will be sent out soon to redeem complimentary or discounted registration.

Register at: https://registration.socio.events/e/equityinstemcc2023

Events

Women in Transportation Webinar Wednesday 3.29

Join us on Wednesday, March 29, 12pm ET for a webinar on women in transportation, featuring speakers with over six decades of combined experience in the field. Register at bit.ly/WEPANWiT2023

• Jessica Rich, SS4A Program Manager at Federal Highway Administration
• Erin Slayton, Senior Vice President at HDR
• Natalie Lockhart, Principal Transportation Planner, Arcadis

The WEPAN Women Engineers Webinar Series continues our tradition of highlighting women engineers in different disciplines and across sectors. We encourage engineering students and professionals, WIE/WISE/MEP program staff, and advocates for women engineers to join us!

WEPAN Accelerator Webinar: Gender in Innovation

The WEPAN Accelerator welcomes Forough Ghahramani and Jennifer Gottwald for a "Gender in Innovation" webinar on Thursday, April 13, 12-1pm ET. Dr. Ghahramani serves as Associate Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Sponsored Programs for Edge, Inc. and Dr. Gottwald serves as Director of Licensing for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

The WEPAN Accelerator works to advance equity innovation and entrepreneurship and is a 2021 winner of the Small Business Administration’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition. The Accelerator programming includes workshops, program days, module courses with/for WEPAN partners, and webinars such as this one.

Register at: https:/bit.ly/WEPANGenderInnovation

News

DiscoverE Releases Messages Matter Report

DiscoverE conducted a year-long research project to find out what today’s teens and their parents think about engineering. This research delves into what today’s teens and their parents think about engineering including:  

·       How they view engineering and a potential career in STEM

·       What resonates and motivates them to consider engineering

We found that targeted messages and profiles of engineers can and do spur interest in engineering among the very groups that will ensure a more diverse future for the field. We invite you to read the findings and share the report with your networks.

Free Online Patent Education Tool, the Inventor's Patent Academy

The Inventor’s Patent Academy (TIPA) was created to help people understand IP and prepare them to apply for their own patents.  The course also explores challenges inventors may face along the way and provides practical advice to overcome those challenges. TIPA is unique because it was designed specifically for diverse inventors and features videos of diverse inventors telling their invention and patenting stories.

The course is comprised of three modules, totaling ~6h of content.  Course takers are provided with completion certificates for each module.  Although the course is designed for individual inventors, instructors and those who work with inventors can also use it as a teaching tool.  

TIPA is available for free on the Invent Together website. See more and get your inventor's journey started at: https://bit.ly/3o5tOg0

NFPA Foundation Scholarship Announcements 2023

NFPA (National Fluid Power Association) has two scholarships available to high school, tech college, and university students. Please share with your community.

Fluid Power Scholarship Application Now Available
The NFPA Education and Technology Foundation is now accepting applications for $2,000 scholarships available to students pursuing fluid power education. This scholarship is partially funded by generous donations to the Tom Wanke Legacy Fund. Multiple scholarships are available for the 2023-24 academic year. The deadline to apply is April 3, 2023, at 11:59 PM CST.

Robotics Challenge Scholarship Application Now Available
The NFPA Education and Technology Foundation is now accepting applications on for the $30,000 scholarship ($7,500 per year, for up to four years) award for a graduating high school senior participates as part of a FIRST® Robotics, National Robotics League, or VEX Robotics Competition Team and uses pneumatics in their robot. One merit-based award is available for the 2023-24 academic year. The deadline to apply is May 1, 2023, at 11:59 PM CST.

Read more and apply at: https://nfpahub.com/nfpa-foundation-scholarship-announcements-2023/

WEPAN Listserv

Do you have something to tell the WEPAN community? Remember that subscription to the WEPAN-L listserv is a member benefit! Share announcements, post publication opportunities, and collaborate with colleagues from different institutions and organizations on special projects.

To subscribe to the WEPAN-L listserv, visit: lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/wepan-l

Resources

Publications, reports, or communications relevant to women in engineering and STEM equity. All resources listed below are available in the ARC Network online resource library. If you need help accessing the library, please contact ARC Librarian Bethany Farmer at bethany@wepan.org.  

• "If Not Now, When? The Promise of STEM Intersectionality in the Twenty-First Century" by K. Mack, O. Taylor, N. Cantor et al.

"Nearly forty years ago, a small group of highly accomplished women of color working in STEM fields gathered together to share their stories about how the “double bind” of race and gender had set them “apart at every turn,” required difficult personal choices, and rendered the price of a career in science—particularly in higher education—far too high. Their resulting collective sense of mission produced the first recorded blueprint for change specifically designed to alter the forces that had kept them small in number, relatively invisible, and excluded from mainstream science."

• "Stereotype Threat and Women's Performance in Engineering" by A. Bell, S. Spencer, E. Iserman et al.

"Recent research has demonstrated that stereotype threat - the concern that others will judge one negatively due to a stereotype that exists about one's group - interferes with women's performance on standardized math and engineering exams. In the current research we find that when a shortened version of the Fundamental of Engineering Exam is described as a test that is diagnostic of ability (i.e., when stereotype threat is high) women perform worse than men on the test. When stereotype threat is reduced, however (by characterizing the test as non-diagnostic or as not producing gender differences), women do just as well as men."

ARC Network

Funded by the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Program, Awards HRD-2121468 and HRD-1740860, the ADVANCE Resource and Coordination (ARC) Network seeks to achieve gender equity for faculty in higher education science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. WEPAN serves as the backbone organization of the ARC Network.

Read and Give Feedback on the Latest ARC Emerging Research Workshop Reports

The two newest reports from the ARC Network's Emerging Research Workshops have been released. The reports, "Using Big Data and Algorithms to Foster Equity in STEM" and "Cultivating Equity In STEM Through Inclusive Language," cover research and promising practices on each of the topics and suggest new directions for future work. We invite the community to share their expertise on the topics. To read the reports and share your input visit https://www.equityinstem.org/categories/erw-reports.

Join WEPAN

Want to encourage your institution to deepen its commitment to equity and excellence?

Consider becoming a 30 for 30 Institutional Champion Member. At this membership level, institutions have unlimited member representatives who get to dive into critical diversity, equity, and inclusion issues through custom workshops. These members also get the opportunity to strengthen their inclusive leadership capacity as part of the Equity and Excellence Council. Additional 30 for 30 Institutional Champion member benefits include:

• Professional Development
• Decades of resources in the WEPAN Knowledge Center
• Professional development webinars, including one featuring an invited speaker from your institution
• Free and discounted workshops, including one customized for your institution
• Free and discounted access to WEPAN’s Program Days
• Three annual convening registrations
• Communication & Networking
• WEPAN-L listserv
• Slack
• WEPAN member directory
• Social media spotlights of your institution
• Workforce
• Free and discounted job postings for your institution in WEPAN’s Career Center

Specific details regarding the member benefits listed above, please review the 30 for 30 Institutional Champion onboarding guide. For more information on how to become a 30 for 30 Institutional Member, please email membership@wepan.org.

Get Involved

Committees

We are looking for visionary members to join our committees and influence programming and member experiences. If you are interested in being a member of a WEPAN committee, please complete this survey: https://forms.gle/ZQyijAGNtPYYtNTV9

WIEP Slack Channel

WEPAN has launched a new channel for Women in Engineering Program staff, #women-in-engineering-programs. The channel is designed for members to share news, ask questions, and network with their peers from other institutions, and post discussion topics for the lunch and learn webinars.

Please join us on Slack to drive that connectivity across our membership during a critical time for connection. Join our Slack community today!

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