Professional Development

The New England Shoreline Section of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE-NESS) pursues an ongoing program of Professional Development (PD) to assist members in achieving their full potential as engineers and leaders, in accordance with the SWE Mission Statement, which may be found on the SWE-NESS main page. Activities include technical tours, charitable activities and personal growth topics. The schedule is supplemented with several networking and social gatherings.

SWE-NESS has sponsored joint activities and meetings with other professional organizations such as:

American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
American Association of Quality (ASQ)
American Association of University Women (AAUW)
Business, Professional Women's Association (BPW)
National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)

Recent meeting topics have included:

Decision Theory Presentation
Building Bridges to Success - Panel Discussion at General Dynamics, Electric Boat
Engineering in the Real World - Panel Discussion at URI
Women & Investing II
Starting Your Own Business

PD events to be held this SWE year are listed on the PD Events page.

In addition to helping our members, SWE-NESS also helps area elementary and middle school teachers in their professional development, learning about physics in a hands-on course called Newton's Gig.

We are currently recruiting for SWE members who are not software engineers to assist in developing a series of Systems Engineering professional development programs for 2002-2003 and beyond. We will be working from materials in development which are proprietary and software oriented. If you are interested in helping us, please contact >Diana Ukleja.

If you would like to share ideas for future Professional Development programs, please contact >Diana Ukleja. Your input is most welcome!

Year	Date	Topic	Description
2002	Thursday, November 7 5:30 PM, Raytheon	"System Engineering"	Hors D'oevres meeting at Raytheon Co in Portsmouth, RI, on the intersection of system engineering and the engineering we are already doing, and the skill set needed to support system engineering. Open to other local engineering associations.
2003	Tuesday, February 25 5:30 PM, Mainstay Inn, Newport	Section Vitality: "Membership"	Following dinner at the Mainstay Inn in Newport, RI, Rita Fordiani from SWE will conduct a workshop for student and professional members on member recruitment, targeting, marketing and retention.
2003	April	Day Timers vs. PDAs	A guest speaker knowledgable in schedule organizing will discuss pros and cons of using paper and electronic methods for time management.
2003	Thursday, September 11 6:00 PM, URI Women's Center	"Physics of Music"	Paul Ukleja, Professor Emeritus of Physics at UMass-Dartmouth, will discuss the physics of music with special attention to resonance, while making interesting noises with unusual "instruments". Gather at 6 for dinner, followed by the program.
2004	Wednesday, April 20 6 PM, Raytheon Company, Portsmouth, RI	"Science Education Reform"	Michele Fitzpatrick will lead this hands-on kit-based discussion on K-12 science education. Members are encouraged to bring educators for networking discussion about this topic and how engineers can help them in the classroom. Light refreshments will be served at 6, followed by the program at 6:30.

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