Society of Women Engineers (SWE)

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is a national organization devoted to the advancement and education of women in science and engineering. The Caltech chapter has 300+ undergrad members and organizes many local activities, including dinners with professors and alumni, community outreach events, receptions with industry recruiters, workshops, and fun de-stressing meetings.

Career Exploration and Networking: SWE coordinates dinners once a month with alumnae and professors across engineering industry and research. We also hold constant recruiting dinners for our industry-oriented undergrads with companies including Citadel, Snapchat, SpaceX, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, DE Shaw, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, Sony Playstation, and others. A new and popular event is our Linkedin photoshoots, where we have a professional photographer (our very own Venus Aradhaya!) hold drop-in sessions for headshots during Spring term. We also do fun de-stressing events once a term, usually around finals, to bring in as many members as possible so that they can get to know each other. These have included making beaded bracelets, painting personal tote bags, making Christmas sundaes, and watching science movies, all with catered dinners.

Community Outreach: Our most important event each year is Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (IGED), where we bring in dozens of middle and high school school girls and show them engineering at Caltech through lab tours, faculty speakers, science competitions, and hands on projects, like extracting DNA from strawberries, making popping boba out of sodium alginate and calcium carbonate, and making LN2 ice cream. We have also partnered with high school SWE chapters to hold remote Q&A sessions where we answer their questions about college applications, picking a career, and how to succeed in university.

SWE Conference: SWE typically covers the WE conference, which involves workshops, seminars, keynote speakers, dinners, and a career fair. Workshop and seminar topics have included technical skills, balancing work and family, dressing for the workplace, and resume building. In the past, we have flown out a Caltech delegation of 10-15 students to this conference.