Saint Francis’s very own Women in STEM (WiSTEM) recently became a chapter of the Society of Women Engineers Next (SWENext) program. This partnership marks one of the school’s first club collaborations with an outside organization. It is a big step in furthering the club’s mission of creating a meaningful platform that empowers young girls to pursue careers in STEM.
SWENext is a smaller chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). It focuses on providing K-12 students with opportunities to connect with the larger SWE community. Offering countless scholarship, award, and networking opportunities, SWENext is an exciting step in aiding the transition from high school STEM interests to real-world applications. As a WiSTEM and now SWENext board member, I think that is the most amazing aspect of the partnership: a pathway that extends far beyond the fun science experiments and challenges the club hosts in the Eggers Innovation Center each month.
Don’t worry, these meetings are here to stay! Being a part of SWENext is an addition to the pre-existing WiSTEM structure. In fact, for club members, the club’s monthly hangouts will remain largely the same. With the introduction of a new program, it’s important to remember that these engaging meetings are still the backbone of the pathway and are a huge part of the catalyst for the change for which SWE advocates. Fun experiments are some of the best ways to explore new interests, connect with new people, and scratch the surface on a potential future in the field. Shruti Dusankar (’28), an active WiSTEM member, explains that being a part of the club has been a cornerstone of her freshman year: “Many of my friends are in this club with me, and through the various sessions, I have learned a wide range of concepts and have built teamwork skills!”
Furthermore, the wide variety of topics we explore—focusing on one letter of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) for each of our first semester meetings—help members gain insight into the variety of options that they have when it comes to STEM. In particular, an artificial intelligence workshop stuck out to Dusankar: “My favorite activity was the AI Pictionary, since we were able to group into teams and combine our creativity [to] form a six word phrase with the AI’s ability to create images based on prompts.”
Ultimately, the goal of this SWENext partnership is to build on these approachable and entertaining events with the support of a global platform. I was able to experience a SWENext event at the end of last year—attending a one-day UC Berkeley workshop, led by their SWE society. It was on our campus tour that the experience seemed to be put into perspective. These were real girls, some only a few years older than me, who were continuing to empower young women as they pursued STEM fields and explored their passions. It was so inspiring to see that this conference was just a few years down the line from the smaller WiSTEM experiments I enjoyed as a ninth grader. This is what excites me most about the SWENext collaboration: the ability to give Lancers a similar experience and empower young girls on our campus to not only achieve their goals, but also to see other powerful women achieving them. Then, they’ll be given the resources to confidently say that they’ll “SWE” next!
