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SWE Pikes Peak Section will be hosting a SWE60 Anniversary Celebration on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at Champ's in Briargate from 5:30 am to 7:00 pm. Champ's Restaurant is located at 1765 Briargate Pkwy, Colorado Springs, CO within The Promenade Shops at Briargate. We are coinciding this event with our SWE-PPS Networking Night. SWE's 60th Anniversary is May 27, 2010 which is also called Founders Day. Come and join us for our SWE60 Birthday Party!
The Society of Women Engineers – Pikes Peak Section’s Annual Awards Luncheon is scheduled on Saturday, July 10, 2010 at Marigold Café and Bakery, 4605 Centennial Boulevard in Colorado Springs. Don't forget to save the date.
The SWE Annual Conferences are a great way to network and learn to expand our knowledge on topics relevant to us. The SWE Annual Conference for 2010 (WE10) is already being planned and has a website up at http://we10.swe.org/. This year's Annual Conference, WE10, will be in Orlando, FL November 4-6, 2010. Next year's Annual Conference, WE11, will be in Chicago, IL October 13-15, 2011. The year after next, the Annual Conference WE12 will be in Houston, TX November 8-10, 2012. SWE Annual Conferences benefit both professionals and collegians.
On Sat. March 13th, at the Pikes Peak Regional Science Fair, on the campus of UCCS, the Pikes Peak Section of SWE once again participated by rewarding young women for their efforts at the Fair. SWE recognized female scientists at both the senior high and middle school levels. Award winners were Courtney Lutton of Palmer High School and Karin Smith of The Classical Academy. The winners each received a $25 gift certificate to Borders.
Miss Lutton produced a very practical Engineering project entitled “Development and evaluation of hydrogen and oxygen rockets." She built three different bottle rockets with varied size and nose geometry to study the effects of the resulting aerodynamics. Using Trigonometry, she calculated the height each rocket flew. The results showed that a narrower nozzle forced out the water faster, causing a more rapid loss of weight which equated to maximum height.
Seventh grader, Miss Smith, used her project, “Digitally Capturing the Scene of the Crime” to investigate if digital technology could be an inexpensive way to record fingerprints. The purpose of her project was to evaluate different surfaces to see if fingerprints would show up enough to be captured with digital photography. Her conclusion was that glass and wood gave the best clarity – but that the type of chemicals used to make the fingerprints glow was more important than the surface.
The Science Fair remains a crucial outlet for young ladies to demonstrate their science capabilities and garner confidence and recognition. The good news is that compared to ten years ago, the total number of female participants now equals the male participants. In the middle school division, the girls were actually at 56%. The bad news is, however, that we are still losing a lot of girls during high school. Of the Physical Science and Engineering category participants, 42% were female in middle school, but this dropped to less than 5% in high school.
In general, while the spectrum of original topics was not very broad, the enthusiasm for the scientific process was still high and all the young ladies I spoke to gave interesting and informative presentations!
---Brenda Wolfe, Science Fair Chair
The Pikes Peak Section has awarded 148 Certificates of Merit to deserving scholars from 50 Colorado high schools for outstanding achievement in math and science. In addition, special thanks to four of our members: Deepti Reddy, Mary Beckman, Jane Fraser and Diane Howe for graciously awarding these certificates at the school's senior award assembly.
SWE-PPS will be going on a walking tour of the Art on the Streets in downtown Colorado Springs. The Walking Tour of Downtown Art is scheduled for August 5, 2010 at 6:30 PM for a duration of one hour. Meet at the giant paper clips on Tejon near Plaza of the Rockies. Park in the public parking garage just off Nevada. The SWE-PPS point of contact is Sue Brazil, sue.brazil@tasc.com.
The President of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) Collegiate Section of SWE, Holly Peterson, was kind enough to take time out of her hectic schedule (with finals looming) to update us with their happenings there. Below is her list of goings-on.
August - signed up approximately 45 students for the mailing list
September - started organizing and planning the Fall Semester and trip to the Annual Conference
October - helped with planning, scheduling and hosting resume workshops, mock interviews and Engineering Expo; sent 8 members to the Annual Conference in Long Beach, CA for 5 days and 4 nights; Halloweengineering Raffle where we raffled off VIP passes to the Haunted Mines attraction
November - Annual SWE Day at UCCS (an event where local high school students come up to UCCS and listen to a Keynote about encouraging interest in engineering and have lunch before they return school); "Pin the Feather on the Turkey" Fundraiser
December - most successful fundraiser of the year was taking donations for hot chocolate and coffee at the Festival of Lights Parade; Vice President of the Fall semester graduates
January - new Vice President takes over position; start discussing options for the Spring Semester
February - Valentine's Day Dinner Raffle to the Craftwood Inn (gift certificate donated); helped with Engineering Challenge (an event where local middle schoolers come up to UCCS and get to participate in different activities so that they may find interest in engineering; it was a great experience for SWE to collaborate with other student clubs, i.e. IEEE, NSBE, SHPE, etc.)
April - elected new officers for Fall 2010-Spring 2011 Academic Year; held first Annual Alumni Dinner and Silent Auction in which items donated were requested from various local companies, i.e. Air Force Academy Football, Colorado Springs Sky Sox, etc.
It is time once again to call for members to serve on the SWE-PPS Executive Board. Some of our Board Members are not planning on remaining on the Board next year. Therefore we need new Board members. Membership on the Board takes a commitment of less than five hours per month for a one year term starting in July. We have monthly meetings which last about an hour plus there are some tasks related to each position. If you are interested in serving on this Board, please contact Connie King at connie@chkinglaw.com.
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