|
More than three thousand attendees enjoyed brisk January temperatures and sparkling snow in Denver, CO at the thirtieth National Technical and Career Convention (NTCC) of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE, www.shpe.org). Students and professional members chose from a wide variety of workshops and sessions designed to further their careers and boost their technical skills.
Pre-college and college
Pre-college attendees got a thrill early in the week when they visited with Jose Hernandez, an EE and NASA astronaut. Hernandez is the son of migrant Mexican workers who picked crops in California. He has done groundbreaking research at Lawrence Livermore Labs and currently works as a NASA engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.
College students competed in the Extreme Engineering Challenge, in which six teams, each led by an industry mentor spent twenty-four hours building a wooden race car and preparing a marketing plan to promote it. The top winners received $2,000 scholarships. Other competitions included an academic Olympiad and Web design, technical paper and research poster contests for students at several levels.
Partnering with others
SHPE partnered with a number of other Hispanic and minority technical societies to produce the conference. MAES, HENAAC and SACNAS participated, along with SWE, NSBE and the Association of Naval Service Officers, a group for minority Navy personnel.
These groups cooperated with SHPE during the past year on a variety of activities to promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers to minority youth. SHPE national president Diana L. Gomez stresses that minority under-representation in STEM occupations is "a much bigger issue than any single group can solve alone."
SHPE has also formed a number of innovative partnerships with industry. One, announced at the conference, is an IBM/SHPE program of "cascading" mentorships. Senior IBM engineers will mentor Hispanic college students, and they in turn will work with middle-school students.
Diana Gomez speaks out
During the SHPE show, Diversity/Careers editor Kate Colborn interviewed president Gomez, who is also an engineer with Caltrans, the California state transportation department.
Gomez will complete her second two-year term as SHPE national president this summer. During her tenure the organization began a number of new programs, including a series of professional development workshops at the national conference and a management leadership institute that runs throughout the year. Several participants in the programs have already been promoted as direct results of the training they received, Gomez reports.
This year Gomez and her team will make another radical change: the national convention will shift to the fall. The next NTCC is scheduled to take place in Philadelphia, PA from October 31 to November 4, 2007.
The change was made "to mesh better with recruiting cycles," Gomez explains. Regional conferences are expected to take place in the spring.
Everybody's input
Gomez has relied on "a lot of communication and a lot of marketing" to promote her ideas to the SHPE leadership team. All the changes "have to have everybody's input," she emphasizes.
She hasn't decided yet whether to run for a third term as president, but she's proud of the progress SHPE has made during her years in office. Membership has grown, new chapters have formed, and new corporate partners have come on board.
Strengthening SHPE has been her first priority. "We're celebrating our thirtieth anniversary this year, and I want to be sure SHPE is around to celebrate the sixtieth," she says.
- Kate Colborn
D/C
|
