Presenting a remote speaker series allowed us to have high caliber speakers at a lower cost and gave an opportunity for more people to attend.

Holding it as a Lunch and Learn allowed for bigger attendance, due to events being at a convenient time.

The use of different advertising platforms (Yammer, Facebook, Instagram, SWE buzz) succeeded in reaching a more diverse audience.

It is advised that the speakers are selected early in the event planning process and that team members are encouraged to take the lead in the organization of the events (prework, presenting, advertising, etc).

Being able to have the funds to provide meal vouchers and professional portfolios to the attendees increased participation and attendance.

Zoom provided a suitable platform to have intimate virtual workshops by using the breakout rooms.

Find an engaging speaker who is experienced in Improv.

Hold the event at a large, quiet space so attendees can comfortably participate in the activities.

Allow time for discussions between activities to share stories or reflect on the skills learned. This will further engage the group and connect the activity back to the professional development mission.

For wintertime events, plan and schedule a rain date in advance to stay on students’ schedules

Recruit volunteers early and break up into teams to plan separate activities

Schedule monthly planning meetings to accomplish goals in a timely manner. Include sponsors and event partners in planning meetings.

Use online tools to organize the event. VolunteerLocal can be used to allow volunteers to sign up to help. Eventbrite can be used for parent and student registrations.

Have a designated volunteer manager who will be responsible for communicating with volunteers and providing assistance on the day of the event

Promote the event through social media and on local county Chambers of Commerce calendars

Provide frequent updates to parents prior to the event

Check the venue security policies to minimize check-in time

Check for food allergies for lunch

Promote SWENext with flyers and a lunchtime presentation

Include SWENext Club Leaders in PEP Presentations

Depending on event size, allow for more than one hour for a STEM Expo so students have time to do the hands-on activities with STEM exhibitors

Host an orientation meeting or conference call for STEM Expo exhibitors

Allow at least 30 minutes for panel discussions to provide time for audience interaction with panelists

Provide t-shirts or custom designed Girl Scout badges for participants

Provide information packets/folders for students and parents at the beginning of the event. Student folders may include fun activity sheets, pre-event and post-event surveys, and worksheets for the engineering hands-on activities. Parent folders may include event survey, event agenda, a SWENext flyer, and handouts about female representation in the STEM field.

Having cameras turned on helped to encourage interactive participation. Testing connections prior to the sessions also minimized AV issues.

Leverage QR codes to save space on materials! The event flyer held a QR code that led to the Columbia River Section’s Community Outreach page. Instructions for experiments also had a QR code to the video and the materials list.

The organizers advise, “Don’t reinvent the wheel, piggybacking off of other’s experiment ideas is just as effective as new experiments”.

The SWE IIT conference planners believed that effective delegation and organization were essential to the success of the event, especially in light of the large number of attendees.

SWE IIT has a large member board. Each board member was assigned a conference event to moderate. That member also monitored the chat box for questions or assistance needed. This delegation enabled everyone to juggle their own school/workload while taking on conference responsibilities.

Reaching out to conference speakers, creating media, and working with other organizations requires an adequate lead time to build a successful event.

It was imperative to manage the finances to ensure all expenses incurred were paid on time.

Event speaker Lisa London, NCC, LCPC provided this “Ah-ha” moment quote: “Here is a great common sense tip: one of the easiest types of self-care is to organize your life so you feel less stressed.”

A virtual makerspace allows access to many more students from different locations. However, it limits the in-person relationship building and physical assistance many students need. Fifteen students with an instructor seemed optimal.

Create a positive environment to allow reflection, casual conversation and a supportive network so that participants feel comfortable to make mistakes and take big risks. Provide time at the end of each activity for students to report and showcase their design work and have a platform to speak.

As educators they learned some of the challenges of virtual learning for the hearing impaired students. For example, the hearing impaired students struggled to watch both the instructor’s screen and the ASL interpreter’s screen at the same time. To create a more inclusive classroom, modification in the instruction timing was needed to accommodate.

The section was resolute and committed to provide a robust and exciting virtual hands-on, interactive learning experience. The SWE members thought “outside the box” to retain key components of exploring a college campus and the ability for the high school students to interact with female engineering students through a virtual platform.

Early, careful and thoughtful planning with a strong SWE volunteer presence was critical to the success of this program during the coronavirus pandemic.

The planning group advised, “Start early and spread out where you look for help”. The group believes that the event was very successful because they received perspectives from different fields and career stages so that the information shared was more applicable to a broader group instead of a select few.

Attendees highlighted the daily community rooms, intersectionality and end of day discussions. These sessions were a very different networking experience than conducted at traditional conferences or summits. Attendees felt connections were made which could be later utilized.

Be open-minded and willing to make use of the resources that your SWE section has.

We as a collegiate section won't be able to have all the great professional mentors that we do now if we didn't muster the courage to reach out to people.

Treat participants like adults and thoroughly explain the scientific properties behind the products they are making, since they will understand the concepts when broken down.

Having a smaller breakout room once they have started the activities, so that the participants can have one-on-one help with fellow participants and volunteers, and their questions can turn into real engineering conversations.

Strong teamwork was key to the success of this program, with division of work during the weeks leading up to the event, as well as during the event. Members spent multiple weeks putting together their instructional videos and module supply bags prior to the event.

The attendees completed the modules at home as SWE members interacted virtually through the SWE at ERAU Facebook page and on the igew.org website.

Members suggested finding multiple avenues to advertise the program in addition to public schools, such as home-schooled students and other student groups (i.e., Girl Scouts, Girls Clubs, etc.)

Ensure a large interest before planning.

Especially when planning a virtual event: give the kids a hands-on activity they can do. While seminars and speakers are nice, you need to engage them and let them have fun while learning.

We had to adapt to our new COVID world, we embraced the virtual meetings for safety and still got the connection and networking outcomes we would have gotten in person.

Listen to what the members of your section want. They might not say what specific event they would like, but they will give feedback over the purpose and objectives of the event.

One of the Ah-ha moments we experienced is that the Women in Tech book was written by such a strong outspoken woman. She provided clear advice that participants then discussed if it was applicable or not to their specific situation. These discussions shed light upon our own fears of being bold and gave us some new strategies to try that will empower us in the future.

Since the event was virtual, the at-home kits were a huge success! It is important to select the right type of kit for the age range of the participants. It is also important to manage the time of each activity so that all the girls are moving along at the same pace.

The Zoom format was an excellent way to provide quality programming without having to sacrifice personal travel time and expense and we would highly encourage similar programming moving forward.

Ensuring time is allotted for breaks and teambuilding activities encourages the girl scouts to get to know each other and helps them become comfortable working on projects with other people.

Ensuring that at least 2/3 of the activities are hands-on is vital in keeping the girls’ interested and helps them learn that engineering can be fun!

Utilize resources from the local Girl Scout organizations (i.e., Girls Scouts of NYPenn or whatever region you are in) to advertise your events

Set aside at least a month to plan activities and research what activities will be best suited for the age of girls you will be working with

Have grassroot and community support, work with a team that has the same vision and goal to help disseminate information and get results quickly

Have a plan A and plan B to fall back on plan A doesn’t work well with the goals without losing time or coming back to the drawing board.

Take into consideration the audience you intend to invite, the environment, and their level of hunger for growth.

Assign a designated person responsible for each area covered

List your goals and cross out as each is achieved to help you focus on the areas which need more attention

The most difficult part of outreach events is advertising. Flyers work, but they can be expensive to make and require a lot of time to hang around town. Posting in Facebook groups is a quick and easy way to spread the world and allows for easy sharing to other groups. We probably got at least 50% of our participants from Facebook alone. We also emailed local schools, university faculty, and Girl Scout directors to help spread the word

Planning at least three months in advance if minors will be involved at your event to allow time to work with Youth Protection Services to make sure every volunteer completes mandatory training and a background check to become certified volunteers, which can take a few weeks. It would also be smart to have at least five or so extra volunteers certified in case any drop out at the last minute

Make sure to ask about food allergies on your registration form and email any parents to accommodate these students.

Plan thoroughly and do so with the input of your target audience. Curriculum planning had great results, but schedule planning should have been more structured. In trying to be flexible, participants provided availability for each meeting, and in the end it led to less people being involved because they were unclear on meeting times or didn't want to fill out the weekly availability polls.

Rigorous planning allowed discussions to be highly fruitful, meaningful, and have long-lasting impacts. Selective choice of the primary material resulted in participants being excited to invest time in the program because the results were tangible.

Consistent marketing/outreach grew our participant numbers to expand the reach for our first year of the program

Try to get as many registrants as possible if you are running it online, as a lot of people did not show up despite ample reminder emails. Having the event in person would also make it a much more interactive event. If online however, the platform Gather.Town received immense positive feedback from all volunteers and participants.

Finding enthusiastic and passionate leaders for the activities was one of the most crucial parts of the event. The leaders’ excitement rubbed off on the students, who became extremely excited to learn.

Thorough communication was imperative. Making sure all parents were caught up with the latest information and that their children were able to use the online platform was a process of many emails.

Logistics for the event are very important. It is best to pair shadows and college student volunteers up based on interests and majors/interested majors. This was a very important element to the success of the event. I would recommend planning a few months in advance. We started working on this project in November/December and that timeframe gave us plenty of flexibility.

During the event, students were engaged during opening remarks, technical activities, lab tours, and panels. The professor panel, student panel, and lab tours were especially successful; many students walked away from the event feeling as though they had learned a lot from these parts of the day. The students enjoyed being able to tour the nanoengineering and electrical and computer engineering laboratories and to be able to ask professors questions about their experiences. In addition, the flow of the event went well thanks to a good turnout from volunteers; transitions between each event, such as walking each student between the lab tours, went smoothly and volunteers engaged well with the students, making strong connections and helping them feel a sense of community through Society of Women Engineers, UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering, and the population of high school girls in attendance. In addition, the Parent Program was a success, as many parents enjoyed the session on "Interrupting Gender Biases," as well as the presentation from Financial Aid. For future coordinators, we recommend beginning the planning process early and to create a detailed timeline to keep track of all tasks that need to be accomplished. Being aware of deadlines for funding applications and purchasing is critical and must be done early, as well as room reservations and reaching out to professors. In addition, we recommend delegating tasks to subcommittee leads in the Envision Committee accordingly and to give subcommittee leads deadlines and goal-oriented tasks for each meeting.

Bootcamps where multiple activties can be completed are a great way to engage. Start with a manageable scope of participants and activities, so that you can get to all activities with an adequate amount of work time.

We encourage our hosts to personally engage with their shadows/the attendees so that they feel valued, important, and have the best possible experience. It is also important to have passionate volunteers. If your hosts really care about the event and believe in it, the experience of your attendees will be that much better. The last important key practice for this event is to have a component that is also geared to the futures of the attendees so it has a lasting impact. We decided to pursue this by sending the girls home with resources about SWENext and by hosting a parent panel to educate the guardians of the attendees. Focus on personal engagement with your attendees, find passionate volunteers, and on preparing for the futures of the girls.

1. We created a space for professionals to interact with university and high school students, where they networked and explained them their life journeys and the students could ask all relevant questions to start figuring out what type of engineering or technology job there are and learn about where is it one goes and work once one graduates or where one can do your internships.
2. We invited other STEM associations to talk about their projects , their goals and asked them how can we help to start creating collaboration opportunities between us all.
3. We organised a professional networking event where we had circles with some 10 people each where everyone talked about what they do, where they worked, what they studied and what they are working on. Then changed circles to get to know most participants. This information was used later in the afternoon networking event so you could choose whoever you thought you would like to talk or know about a certain person you heard presenting itself earlier.
We fundraised within our own CPC companies but we also worked together across companies to make it happenned, together with SWE HQ support (both financial and logistics)
Fundraising is important. Companies and associations collaboration is crucial. Need also people connected to schools and universities to promote the event amongst students.

One of the keys to the success was the planning process and the team that put the event together. There were 8 team members, an advisor, and two faculty members that all played an essential role. On the day of, they were able to adapt to any problems or changes that needed to happen. The teamwork pulled the event together and without it, some of the hiccups could have made the event go downhill.

Plan well in advance and identify owner for completing the report immediately upon the completion of event
1. We formed group of volunteers who came up with various experiments and ideas for launch during the science day
2. We identified owner for each experiment due to various number of experiments involved.

partner with local companies to host a booth/sent employees to volutneer; reserve space early at venue

Keys to success: Having a great team that is organized, dedicated, understands the importance of communication, teamwork, and collaboration, and is willing to go above and beyond.; Having a great network and knowing how to utilize it. From our network, we got interviewees and were able to get viewership from it.;Funding

Plan early, use internal speakers, have speaker abstracts prior to selection, do a speaker dry run prior to event