Kinchen at WE14

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) has an annual conference that brings together leaders, businesses, organizations, universities, and professionals. It is a chance to reach the best and brightest women engineers. WE14 was held in Los Angeles, California last week, 22-26 October 2014.

Incredible and Wow! I was attending in my role as Charlotte Metrolina Section President along with our Vice President Divya, our section representative Rebecca, and Angela who is our SWE Region D Secretary. We had a lot of fun and made a lot of new friends.

This was my first national and international conference! WE14 was hosting ICWES16, the 16th International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists. This combined event only happens every three years. There with over 8,000 attendees! There were more than 75 sessions to choose from and I only had time to attend about 10 %. I am looking forward to the virtual recordings of the sessions I missed!

It was also a great opportunity to reconnect with Tennessee Tech University SWE collegiate SWE members as their professional SWE counselor. Our next South East Regional Conference will be at TTU in March 2015, with TTU hosting!

My primary focus was as a volunteer, to Inspire the Next Generation of Women Engineers as a Role Model and help with the Invent It, Build It! We had 100 more girls than planned for a total of 600! I was responsible for 110 in my team section. I had some great engineering volunteers helping me including two women Air Force pilots. A record event! There were so many creative and innovative ideas, it was great fun. We built space exploration landing vehicles for 2 astronauts (marshmallow size). We also built electronic dance pads. These activities introduced the following engineering process steps: Identify, Brainstorm, Choose, Design, Test, Show, Redesign.

The next National SWE conference will be in Nashville, TN in October 2015. For more information about SWE go to http://www.swe.com