In June of 2008, I moved to Waterloo, IA to begin my first full-time job after college graduation. Although I quickly got myself involved in different groups and organizations, I still felt as though something was missing. That “something” was my SWE family.
While there certainly were other active engineering organizations in the Cedar Valley for me to participate in, I definitely missed being involved in SWE. SWE had (and still has) something that no other organization, in my opinion, has—and that is spirit. During my drive back to Waterloo after the 2009 Region H Conference hosted at IUPUI, I decided I needed to take action. I spent the next few months putting a plan together, with much advice given by my two SWE mentors, Casee Eisele and Heidi Kenkel. On March 16, 2009, I held the very first meeting of our section at the Cedar Falls Public Library. 29 female engineers joined me that very first meeting. I shared with them the importance of being in SWE. I talked about the outreach activities, the personal and professional development aspects, the awards, the conferences—everything that made me miss SWE. I even invited a few others to join me at the podium to talk about their involvement with SWE.
At that first meeting, I recruited potential members to help begin the chartering phase of our section. Eight women signed up to help. They were: Christine Abele, Amanda Brown, Kathy DeChristopher, Erin Goldsmith, Colleen McClinton, Heidi Mikulsky, Deb Morlan, and April Ramsey. For the next six months, we worked together to plan events and build up our section membership.
In September 2009, we hosted our first official elections. Besides the formal executive positions that were elected that night, we also built up five committees to assist in strengthening our section. These committees were as follows: outreach, speakers, tours, communications, and networking. Since elections, we have been focusing primarily on building up our section to be something we can be proud of as we submit our charter petition this winter.
Written by Kari Zache
Founder, Proposed Cedar Valley Section – Society of Women Engineers
President 2009-2010
