On October 14, 2009, a group of three young engineers traveled to Long Beach, California to attend SWE's National Convention. There they
attended one of the largest career fairs in the nation, with over 300 companies
in attendance. Some of the benefits included:
- Exposure to major companies
- Professional training
- Career focus
- Resume tips
- Networking
This
trip was made possible due to the generous funding from
the Fort Worth professional SWE section, Dr. Robert Akl, and
Dr. Nandika d'Souza.Thank you for making this
trip possible for us.
Long Beach
More than 6,000 women in engineering and technology
converged in Long Beach for WE09—the largest and most comprehensive gathering of
forward-thinking women engineers and technologists.
 
Pictures of the awesome Long Beach Convention Center.
Networking
Ice Cream Social
On our first night, SWE had an ice cream social to welcome everyone to Long Beach.
We had a chance to meet engineers from all over the country.
A group photo of the UNT girls.
Carol and Katherine posing with Tony the Tiger.
Collegiate Activities
On Thursday, we went to a collegiate luncheon sponsored by the Navy. Each table had to answer questions about why they wanted to be an engineer. Melissa went on stage in front of hundreds of people to talk about why she became one.
Celebrate SWE!
On our last night at Long Beach, we attended the Celebrate SWE dinner.
It was a great time for everyone to get together and have fun in the region skits.
Our region representatives, who happen to be wearing props from their region's skits.
Career Fair
Over 450 booths were at SWE's National Career Fair. There we got to talk to large companies that don't come to our local career fairs.
At night, some of the companies had Hospitality Suites, where we got to talk one-on-one with company representatives and eat some good food.
Some of the companies included Lockheed Martin, Intel,
IBM, Microsoft, and TI, and many more.
Boeing brought a Flight Simulator for everyone to play with.
Competitions
During the Conference, we had a large selection of activities to choose from.
NAVSEA Radar
Challenge
We had an opportunity to meet with engineers
from across the NAVSEA Enterprise, and work
on the engineering challenge, “A Study in Acquisition Engineering." The challenge was to work with a team to design a radar system that had a range of at least 30km while falling under a $3 million budget.
Barbeque Sauce
Competition
The KC Masterpiece Barbecue Sauce competition challenged
participants to create an original sauce using familiar flavors
present in KC Masterpiece sauces. Given a bunch of ingredients and no recipe, the challenge was to create something that looked like, smelled like, and tasted like bbq sauce.
Mine ended up tasting like spicy Tabasco BBQ sauce.
SME Bowl
Collegiate teams representing each of the 10 SWE regions had a chance to compete against each other and answer
engineering -related questions. Many of the questions were related to chemistry, biology, and physics.
Katherine represented UNT and teamed up with other Texas University students to answer tough trivia questions.
UNT made it all of the way to the finals and won 2nd place. Each of us won $75, and and we brought back home $1,500 to our Region. Pretty good deal!
The Region C team, with members from Houston, A&M, and UNT.
Exploring Long Beach
Downtown Long Beach. Many major companies are headquartered in California!
The Long Beach Performing Arts Center, where SWE held its region meetings.
Long Beach has a fun night life, here's the Ferris Wheel down by the harbor.
The Harbor was right down the street from the Convention Center.
There are many restaurants and fun stores down there.
We had fun trying on hats and looking through eccentric clothing stores.
There were plenty of restaurants down there, but we ended up getting funnel cake,
chocolate bananas, and candy apples instead.
 
The SWE National Conference is a great opportunity for young engineers to grow professionally and learn about
what they can do with their careers. We hope future engineers will have a chance to attend upcoming conferences,
and make the most out of their careers.
SWE '10 will be held in Orlando, FL next year.
|
|
