WIE welcomes largest number and percent of freshman women to date

10/10/2017 Elizabeth Innes, I-STEM Education Initiative

Recent ECE ILLINOIS alumnae Paula-Angela Mariano (BSEE '16) and Molly Pace (BSEE '16) shared their insights as the keynote speakers.

Written by Elizabeth Innes, I-STEM Education Initiative

Paula-Angela Mariano and Molly Pace, keynote speakers at this year's WIE Orientation.
Paula-Angela Mariano and Molly Pace, keynote speakers at this year's WIE Orientation.
Recent ECE ILLINOIS graduates, Paula-Angela Mariano (BSEE '16) and Molly Pace (BSEE '16), shared their knowledge and experiences as the keynote speakers for this year’s Women in Engineering (WIE) Orientation. Both work at Texas Instruments (TI), one of the corporate sponsors who, along with Abbot, sponsored Orientation for the second year in a row.

Mariano and Pace not only shared their triumphs, but also their somewhat rocky beginnings at Illinois. They recommended resources that helped them overcome challenges they encountered, and they passed on advice about how to not just survive, but to thrive during college. Their main goal? To encourage their younger sisters that they, too, would someday be proud Illinois graduates. The two also taught a workshop related to internships with TI. Read more about their advice to incoming women on the I-STEM site.

The “WIE by the Numbers” slide presented during the session said it all. Since its inception 15 years ago, 2,724 female freshman engineering students have participated in Orientation, with 268 students from the fall 2017 freshman class attending. Another impressive number? The 268 women attending Orientation were a just bit more than half of the total number of female engineering students in the fall 2017 class. This represents the largest number (496) and percentage (25%) of women ever in a freshman engineering class at Illinois—a milestone for Women in Engineering and a cause for celebration. And celebrate they did, as they arrived on campus a few days ahead of all-campus-move-in day, eager to get a head start—to get familiar with campus, make friends and build a community, and to receive sage advice from some older and wiser women in engineering.

The WIE Orientation planning committee included Angie Wolters, Director of Women in Engineering; Brooke Newell, WIE Program Coordinator and Academic Advisor; Co-Student Coordinators Siobhan Fox and Elizabeth Sanders; and WIE Administrative Assistant, Amy Cain. The top five things WIE Orientation planners hoped the girls would take away from Orientation, in descending order, were:

5. Learn about extracurricular activities to join.

Assistant Dean Sue Larson presents her mock lecture to the girls in Grainger Auditorium at the ECEB.
Assistant Dean Sue Larson presents her mock lecture to the girls in Grainger Auditorium at the ECEB.
Throughout the entire event, presenters recommended that students get involved in extracurricular activities. Mariano shared how significant one of them, Women in ECE, had been in providing support she needed during her years at Illinois. Mariano got involved in the Women in ECE RSO (registered student organization), “because they understood exactly what I was going through in one of the most male-dominated fields in engineering here, and we needed to be supportive of one another…they were a great community for me to join and be a part of.”

4. Get familiar with campus and gather tips from upperclassmen.

This year, the committee implemented the new-and-improved WIE Olympics. Comprised of team-building activities, the different stations took place in departmental buildings and other key locations around campus. While the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (ECEB) was the location of the Introductory Session, the girls hiked to Loomis Lab, the home of Physics, because most freshmen will take an introductory-level physics course there. Various activities were held in other key locations (the Engineering Building, the Materials Science Building, Illini Union, Grainger Library, etc.). 

3. Meet professors, faculty, mentors, and classmates in their departments.

An ECE graduate student (right) gets to know ECE freshmen during Wednesday's departmental luncheon.
An ECE graduate student (right) gets to know ECE freshmen during Wednesday's departmental luncheon.
To encourage freshmen to get acquainted with others in their departments, students were organized by majors for several meals. Departmental luncheons on Wednesday encouraged students to not only meet other freshmen and older students in their departments, but administration, faculty, and other key staff.

2. Discover academic and non-academic resources available on campus.

Academic resources incoming students were introduced to included key people; in fact, two helped run the event—WIE Program Coordinator and Academic Advisor, Brooke Newell, and Angie Wolters, Director of Women in Engineering—who both encouraged freshmen to come see them early and often. The keynote speakers Mariano and Pace encouraged students to take advantage of professors’ and TA’s office hours and CARE (the Center for Academic Resources in Engineering) on the 4th floor of Grainger Library. 

1. Build a community and make Illinois your home!

The #1 piece of advice students received was this: start building a community! To help students begin, girls were grouped by dorms, which could lead to relationships/study groups with students in their dorms; by department (see #3 above); and this year planners added a third layer: they took students’ schedules into account when forming groups. 

Haneen Said, an ECE ILLINOIS freshman at the Orientation, reports that the most important thing she had gained (as of Wednesday morning) was “getting to know everyone.” She added, “everyone here is new, and everyone here is trying to find their way on campus and trying to use all their opportunities and take advantage of everything. So I think it was cool just to see the different personalities and connect with people. That's what I took more from this, the connections.”

Read more about WIE Orientation on the I-STEM website. All photos by Elizabeth Innes, I-STEM Education Initiative.


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This story was published October 10, 2017.