You can’t spell SWE without ‘we’: Society of Women Engineers uplift women in STEM
Members of Chapman’s Society of Women Engineers spoke to The Panther about their group attending conferences, the benefits of joining the club and why they love being a part of the organization. Photo collage by EMILY PARIS, Photo Editor, photos courtesy of the Society of Women Engineers club
Before officially committing to Chapman, junior software engineering and peace studies double major Daisy Fernandez-Reyes was a STEM scholar at Orange High School. She was paired up with a professor at Chapman, Franceli Cibrian, to conduct research, and through this, she was able to discover the Fowler School of Engineering. She quickly became passionate about what they had to offer.
“I really liked seeing that these professors were so committed to helping us go for that education,” Fernandez-Reyes said. “The professor I worked with did a lot of work with children with disabilities and children with autism and ADHD, hyperactivity. I really was interested in doing work like that. I just didn't know there was potential for that in computers and engineering. I think that was definitely a huge motivator for me, especially when I finally came to Chapman.”
Fernandez-Reyes went on to become the Vice President of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) on campus — a position that she has since given up but proudly served. SWE is an international organization focused on supporting, uplifting and advocating for women in various engineering fields. Although their goal is to help women engineers, SWE advocates for any person in an underrepresented community, and even men can join the organization. Rather than hosting weekly meetings, the club prefers to put on bigger events for its members.
“For certain events like socials, people can get food and they can socialize. We do those a lot in collaboration with other clubs because we believe in strengthening those bonds between the clubs,” said SWE president Yanelly Mego, a junior software engineering major. “We have held workshops before. We also had a guest speaker before too.”
Although the members enjoy any time spent together, Mego said her favorite memory with the group was attending a WE Local conference in Las Vegas last year.
“We're very grateful that (Student Government Association) was able to help us with the funding of a group, of not just board members, but even a lot of regular members too,” Mego told The Panther. “We were able to go to that smaller conference, (and) it was just really nice, like walking around there. There were a lot of speakers, lots of little workshops and interaction with different people, and everyone's really nice. You can feel it in the atmosphere that people try to help each other.”
Mego admits that there are plenty of clubs on campus that support the success of women, but SWE is unique because of the countless benefits offered when registering with their organization.
“I know there are a lot of organizations or clubs that focus on advocating for women, and I think all of those are amazing,” Mego said. “But one of the things I like about SWE, specifically, is that you can be a (club) member, but you can also be a registered member of SWE (the international non-profit). The benefits that that brings are quite a lot. They offer a lot of online webinars, discounts for their conferences, scholarships, and they have their own Career Center where you can put in your resume and apply for jobs.”
Despite the club’s current success, the original members faced setbacks and hurdles on their journey to becoming an established section of SWE, which took a little over a year but became official in February. This included pushback from Chapman itself – but it didn’t stop Fernandez-Reyes from having a positive outlook on the situation.
“I think the initial lack of support was very demotivating because being in engineering — it’s not the most woman-heavy spot, and there weren’t a lot of women that we could have join our organization. We didn’t really get the response we wanted from the male population and the School of Engineering. I think over time, they definitely came around as we got bigger. It feels sometimes like you have to really prove your legitimacy in engineering before you are taken seriously.”
Fernandez-Reyes was eager to share that the future of SWE looks bright, and she encourages anyone interested to join.
“We have a lot of really big things planned now that we've actually made it official,” Fernandez-Reyes said. “We plan on going to Chicago for the global conference this fall and hopefully just getting more involved with other chapters. I expect to get bigger as our committee starts to get even more receptive.”
To learn more about upcoming SWE events, check out their Instagram.
