Faculty advisors and counselors play an important role in establishing and sustaining a successful Society of Women Engineers (SWE) student section. Currently most SWE collegiate sections have both faculty advisors and counselors. A faculty advisor, who is required for student organizations in most universities, serves as the liaison between the SWE section and the university and is responsible for knowing the university’s policies. A faculty advisor helps the student section access university resources and ensures the section is meeting all university requirements. A counselor is required by SWE for a collegiate section to remain in “good standing” and serves as the liaison between the SWE section and other SWE professional members and the industry [1]. The relationship between collegiate sections and their faculty advisors and counselors is different at every university.
This paper examines the role of faculty advisors and counselors in SWE collegiate sections. The objective of this study is to determine how faculty advisors and counselors act as liaisons between the SWE sections and their respective universities and local industries to better serve female students. A survey about how SWE faculty advisors and counselors for collegiate sections view their role in the organization was conducted. A total of 76 faculty advisors and counselors responded to the survey. The data were analyzed and our findings show faculty advisors and counselors play an important role in providing continuity to the section, participation in and understanding of the larger organization, and in mentoring students on both general leadership and SWE leadership. The data also show that there is a correlation between the size of the section and the level of involvement of the faculty advisor/counselors. Larger sections have more involvement from both faculty advisors and counselors. Some respondents, who identified themselves as advisors for multiple student organizations, feel that their advising roles are similar. Therefore, the findings represented in this study can be generalized to other student organizations as well.
Alexa Rihana Abdallah is a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Detroit Mercy. She earned both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Dr. Peters is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Kettering University. Dr. Peters teaches courses in the dynamic systems and controls area, and is faculty advisor to the SAE/GM AutoDrive Challenge team at Kettering University, and to the Society of Women Engineers at Kettering.
Gloria Ma is a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering program at Wentworth Institute of Technology. She is actively involved in community services of offering STEM workshops to middle- and high-school girls. Her research interests include dynamics and system modeling, geometry modeling, project based engineering design, and robotics in manufacturing, artificial intelligent in Manufacturing, and engineering education.
Stephanie Wettstein is an Assistant Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT. She has been the faculty advisor of the MSU SWE chapter since 2013 and a member of the MEERC.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7988-0906
University of Colorado, Denver
[biography]
Dr. Maryam Darbeheshti is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado, Denver. She is the PI of a recent NSF award that focuses on STEM identity at Urban Universities.
Darbeheshti's primary research is in the area of Mul
Dr. Karinna Vernaza joined Gannon University in 2003, and she is the interim Dean of the College of Engineering and Business and a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Her B.S. is in Marine Systems Engineering from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. She was awarded the 2012 ASEE NCS Outstanding Teacher Award, 2013 Gannon University Distinguished Faculty Award and 2013-2014 Gannon University Faculty Award for Excellence in Service-Learning. Dr. Vernaza does research in engineering education and high-strain deformation of materials. She is currently the PI of an NSF S-STEM.
Associate Professor Christy Remucal (née Christina Renée Keenan) leads the Aquatic Chemistry group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is a faculty member in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, the Environmental Chemistry & Technology Program, and the Limnology & Marine Science Program. She holds an MS (2004) and a PhD (2009) in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BS (2003) in Environmental Engineering Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining the UW faculty, Christy completed a post-doc in the Institute for Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
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