Press Release: Announcing the Launch of the Second ACCESS+ Cohort

This document is a press release announcing the launch of the second ACCESS+ cohort, welcoming 14 STEM professional societies into its Community of Practice. It explains ACCESS+’s mission to create STEM spaces where women and gender minorities thrive, leveraging professional societies to drive systemic culture change toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The release emphasizes the role of societies in shaping disciplinary culture, outlines program goals—developing DEI competencies, assessing organizational strengths, creating strategic action plans, and learning from shared resources—and notes that the new cohort will begin with the Equity Environmental Scanning Tool (EEST). It lists all 14 participating societies and reiterates ACCESS+’s NSF-funded partnership structure and WEPAN’s leadership in advancing inclusive engineering education and workplaces.