Society of Women Engineers: More than 50 Years of Service “Women think that an engineer is a man in hip boots building a dam,” said Beatrice A. Hicks, the first president of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Originally cited in a 1952 article in Mademoiselle, this is just one of the misconceptions that SWE has battled for more than 50 years. A nationally recognized, nonprofit organization whose membership includes professional, graduate, and undergraduate female and male engineers, the mission of SWE is to increase awareness of the opportunities for women in engineering while also helping them overcome some of the challenges they may encounter during their academic and professional lives. Career guidance, mentoring programs, scholarships, awards, and service projects are some of the tools that both the national and university sections of SWE have used to encourage and support women in engineering. For more than 20 years the Notre Dame SWE section has encouraged women in the College of Engineering to reach out to one another and to the community. Students from the current section are active in the South Bend area, whether working with local Girl Scout troops to earn technical merit badges, volunteering for science demonstrations at the Robinson Community Center, or participating in “Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics,” a University sponsored career conference for sixth- to eighth-grade girls. Notre Dame SWE members also encourage one another through student-to-student mentoring, dorm community activities, monthly meetings, and special speakers. For example, one of the featured speakers this year was Kristen Carey, a 2002 graduate of the civil engineering and geological sciences department. Carey, a field manager for Turner Construction, is currently working on the renovation of Chicago’s Soldier Field. Officers for the 2002-03 academic year were: Nicole Wykoff, president and a junior in electrical engineering; Jenna Spanbauer, vice president and a senior in mechanical engineering; Meghan Roe, secretary and a junior in chemical engineering; Carolyn Lauer, treasurer and electrical engineering senior; and Allyson Swanson, liaison to the Joint Engineering Council and a junior in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences. For more information on the Notre Dame SWE section, visit http://www.nd.edu/~swe.