Presented by: Amy Jones, Rachel Kohner, Erin Ralph and Susan Rodriguez

1. Outreach in a
Section with
Small Arms

2. Contact Information
• DubuqueSWE@gmail.com
• Facebook.com/DubuqueSWE
• Presenters:
o Amy Jones
o Erin Ralph
o Rachel Le Vély
o Susan Rodríguez

3. Agenda
• Introductions and Welcome
• History of Our Section
• How To
o Finding and building relationships with your community
o Designing an event
o Scaling an activity
o Encouraging members to volunteer
• Successes / Impact of our Section
• Sustaining the Impact

4. History of our section

5. New Professional Section
Formation
5 Step Process
New Section coordinator receives an inquiry
Proposed section’s contact person determines feasibility
Proposed section begins chartering process
BOD approves proposed section’s charter
Section meets all section requirements

6. Dubuque Area Core Team
Erin Ralph, Jenna Walsh, Rachel Le Vely, Sandra Schultz

7. 2010 Activity – Initial
Planning Phase
August 2010
Initial
Conversation
September 2010
Core Team
Organized
October 2010
Started
Chartering
Process
November 2010
1st Chartering
Meeting
“What is SWE?”

8. 2011 Activity
January - September
2011
Monthly Chartering
Meetings
Monthly Section Events
October 2011
Chartered @
Annual
Conference
November 2011
Outreach Kickoff
(15)
December 2011
Chartering
Celebration (77)

10. DBQ Area SWE Org Structure
President
Vice President
Membership
Chair
Awards
Coordinator
Professional
Development Chair
Outreach Chair
Networking
Chair
Treasurer
Finance Chair
Audit Chair
Fundraising
Chair
Secretary
Publicity
Coordinator
Webmaster
Newsletter Editor
Social Media
Coordinator
Section
Representative
Collegiate
Counselor

11. Dubuque Area
Membership Growth
July 2014
52
June 2013
35
March 2012
33
December
2011 - 27
February
2011 - 10
Oct
2010 - 2

12. Finding and Building
Relationships with
Community Partners

13. General Notes
• You can’t do it alone
• Don’t try to reinvent the wheel
• Look for partners who can handle some of the time-intensive
parts of outreach event planning

14. Finding partners – Some ideas
• Chamber of Commerce
• Girl Scouts, FIRST LEGO League
• Schools – Science Coordinator / Gifted and
Talented Coordinator
• After school programs (Community Center,
Multicultural Center)
• Local attractions (library, river museum, you can ask
what groups visit them)
• Local Colleges – Community Colleges, etc.
• Other professional organization (Women’s
Leadership Network, SAE, SHPE)

15. Building relationships with
partners
• Reach out to them to learn more about them
o You want to make sure that they’re a good fit for SWE and your section
• Add them to your distributions list/Facebook page
• Consider holding an outreach kickoff
o Introduces partners to your section
o Lay out a plan for outreach over the year
• Allow your network to grow – please forward my
information

16. Sample Email
Dear X,
I am the outreach chair for the X section of the Society of
Women Engineers. I found your contact information through X, who
let me know that you are involved with outreach.
Our section consists of engineering and science professionals
with a passion for educational outreach. I’d love to meet with you to
discuss opportunities for our organizations to work together. Please
let me know if you have any availability during the week of the 10th.
In the meantime, I hope that you’ll keep me aware of any outreach
opportunities that I can pass along to the SWE membership.
If there are other organizations in the community that you
think might be interested in partnership with SWE, please don’t
hesitate to pass along my contact information.
Warm regards,
Your Name

17. Best Practices
• Designate an outreach chair, as a single point of
contact
• Meet Face to Face at least 2x/year
• Establish clear expectations of volunteers and
numbers of volunteers EVERY TIME
• Know who’s going to take the lead for each event.
o Consider establishing this in writing
• Reach out and offer what you have (volunteers),
but don’t overpromise

18. Designing an Activity

19. Types of events
• Level 1: Just show up
o Classroom presentations
o Career Fairs
• Level 2: Present an activity as part of a larger event
o STEM fair
o Summer camps
• Level 3: We plan and organize the entire event.
o SWE “Event in a Box” activities
o Loras Career Panel

20. Step 1 – Define the Parameters
• Event Goals
o Build confidence in math and science skills
o Improve attitudes (“This is kind of fun!”)
o Expose students to career opportunities
• Event Audience
o Age / Gender
o Mixed vs. One group
• Event Resources
o Type of room, amount of time
o Cost/budget
o Timing of event, how long do you have to recruit volunteers
o Supplies available

21. Step 2 – Define what you need
• Resources
o Ratio of Volunteers: Students
• Elementary School 1:4
• Middle School 1:6
• High School/College 1:10
o Materials
• Usually 110-125% of what is recommended
• Always add paper towels
• Reuseable
o Reoccurring events are great for sustainability

22. Step 3a – Define the details
• Types of Events
o Presentation
• (What is engineering, design process, etc.)
o Activity
• Hands on
o Discussion / Processing
• What did you see?
• Why do you think that is?
• What if…?
• What would you have changed?

23. Activity Resources
• http://growingastemclassroom.blogspot.com/p/fre
ebies.html
• DiscoverE.org
• PBS Design Squad
(http://pbskids.org/designsquad/parentseducators/
index.html)
• PBS Zoom (http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/sci/)
• SWE Aspire website
• http://iexplorestem.org/resources

24. Step 3b – Scale the activity
For the same basic activity, change the difficulty level
by:
• Add/remove some of the materials
• Add a “cost” criteria for design activities (the fewer
the materials, the better)
• Allow time to iterate/discuss what students would
have changed
• Add processing questions
• Introduce a real world application based on the
underlying STEM concept

25. Example
• Penny Boat
o For 10 first grade students with 3 volunteers
• Presentation is high level about problem solving
• Volunteers stay with a group and ask leading questions to help
• Emphasis on trying things out and successfully moving pennies
o For 20 high school sophomores with 2 volunteers
• Presentation changes to incorporate more “real world”
• Story adapts to something more feasible, but connected to a higher
purpose. (Moving food to refuges)
• Challenges are added (wider variety of materials, more complicated
challenges, additional time allocated for design phase)
• Volunteers “float” between groups, listening and answering questions
• Focus on accomplishing a goal efficiently and applying principles to
real world type activity.

26. Encouraging Volunteers

27. Encouraging members to
volunteer
• Set clear expectations
o I need someone to help plan
o I need someone to present
o I need someone to work with a group of 4-6 students on activity A
• Give them a safe space to learn
o An experienced volunteer will go with you to X event
• Reach out individually with a clear Ask.
• Give plenty of notice and respond promptly
o 4-6 weeks tends to be the best window of time to introduce an event
• Advertise what skills they gain
o Practice presenting, etc.
• Connect them with higher purpose

28. Connecting members to a
higher purpose
• Why is STEM outreach important?

29. Why Outreach?
Bachelor Degree by Gender
Female
Male
To make matters worse, the number of women who STAY in engineering
fields declines to 9%....

30. Why Outreach to Women?
Studies have shown that increases the number of women also increases diversity
overall. Looking at the numbers….
Bachelor Degree by Ethnicity
White
Black
Asian American
Hispanic
Unknown
Other

31. Decline in # of Students
pursuing STEM
• Recent decline of students pursuing engineering
degrees
– For decades there has been a shortage of female students
who pursue STEM careers and the # has been declining
in the US since 1991 (Forssen, 2011)
• One strong contributing factor to this is that high
school girls feel they don’t have strong enough
mathematical or computing background to pursue a
STEM career – Lack of Confidence! Lack of Role
Models!

32. How can we change this?
With Outreach!
• Outreach can give students
information about engineering
disiplines and careers, the basics of
engineering education, and details
about becoming a professional
engineer (Goonatilake, 2012)

33. How to Impact Female Students –
Know Your Audience!
• Two ways to to impact the rate at which female students pursue
STEM careers: (Forseen, 2011)
– Need to increase students knowledge and confidence towards the STEM fields
with early classroom exposure to these fields
– Need to expose the students (and their teachers) to the exciting career
opportunities within STEM
• One study found that female students may find the
communication and creativity aspects of engineering appealing
while male students may find the problem solving aspects
appealing (Forssen, 2011)
• Another study found that high school girls prefer human/human interaction
with the computer as an enabling device as opposed to computer/human
interaction only (Hanor, 1998)

34. Sustainability
aka Making it Easy

35. Best Practices
• Build a “library” of activities
o Available online (DiscoverE.org, etc.)
o Scale activities based on audience / volunteers – talk through during
activity
• Create a volunteer handout
o See Sample “Penny Boat Volunteer Handout”
• Spend one day bundling materials with activity
o Volunteers can grab a kit and go
o Reusing materials

36. Our Impact

37. Career Fairs
• SWE presents at 4 career fairs annually
o 2 local high schools
o Fall/spring 8th grade events
• Pre-made “Engineering 101” PowerPoint for
volunteers to use
• Time commitment
o Chair planning time: 1 hour
o Volunteer time: 2 hours each
o 4 volunteers per event
• Impact: >100 students each time!
• First session to fill up at most recent fair

38. Girl Scouts DREAM Event
• Run by Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western
Illinois
• Event for middle school girls to learn about various
career paths
• Rachel noticed a lack of STEM activities in 2013 and
contacted Girl Scouts
• Volunteers led Brush Bots activity
• Invited to participate again in 2014
• Time commitment
o Chair planning time: 2 hours
o Volunteer time: 1.5 hours

39. SHPE Noche de Ciencias
• First year event held in Dubuque
• Partnered with Dubuque SHPE and St. Anthony
Elementary School
• STEM activities for children pre-K through 12th grade
o Pinwheels, penny boat, tillage, marshmallow challenge, FIRST robotics
• College & financial aid info sessions for parents
• Mini college fair
• SWE volunteers: 4
• Impact: >100 students! Registration had to be
closed down

40. STEM Festival
• Dubuque Family STEM Festival
• 4,000 attendees, 50 exhibitors
• Target 3rd-8th grades, parents
• 4 volunteers to run the booth
• Penny boats activity
• Brochures for parents

41. Loras Career Panel
• Local college with engineering program
• 5 panelists, 25 students
• Very little planning time and cost

42. Impact (since Oct. 2013)
• 9 events
• 30 volunteers
• 70 volunteer hours
• More than 600 students
600+ students
30
volunteers
1 Outreach
Chair

43. Sustaining the Impact –
Event Reviews in Newsletter

44. Use of Surveys
• Survey Monkey / Doodle Poll
o Surveyed members to try to get input on
• Day/time of day to have events
• Type of event our membership is most interested in
• Surveys to quantify the impact
o Pre-Survey and Post-Survey should share questions, to show the change
caused by the event
o Ask for surveys to be completed AT the event, not afterwards
o See handout for sample survey

45. Evaluate events
• Impact is more than just numbers. It may be a
connection with an organization, or a personal
connection with a student
• It’s okay to cut things. You can’t do everything.
o Events should relate to (and support) SWE’s mission and the need of your
members.
• Event Recap forms gather the information that you
need
o See handout for an example

46. Recognizing volunteers
• Newsletter
• Hand written thank you
note
• SWE “Be That Engineer” in
frame (~$2/each)
• Highlight what they
specifically brought to the
activity
• Ask for feedback and use it
• Lunch/dinner recognition
events

47. Managing Transitions

48. Managing the transitions
between volunteers
• Transitioning Leaders / Outreach Chairs:
o Create forms/templates for emails, thank you’s, and event planning
o Keep contacts current and introduce new people to the partner
organizations
o Organize and keep documentation of past events
o Ask clearly for what you need from the outgoing person
o When possible, complete planning for events around the transition time
(+/- 2 months) WITH the new person.
o Try not to transition everybody (Executive Board members, chairs, and
volunteers) at the same time.
• If possible, transition Executive Board members first.
o Transition in the summer. It tends to be slower for outreach events.