WE20's theme was Practice Curiosity and occurred virtually this year over the course of two weeks: Nov. 2nd -13th. We had at least six ECI members attend the conference this year to Practice Curiosity during several live or pre-recorded sessions. We also had members recruiting for their respective companies. The highlight for ECI was being recognized during one of the keynote sessions as winner of the SWE Bronze Mission Award for exemplifying SWE's strategic mission through our section events. ​

There are a few On-Demand sessions available to the general public. If you are interested in checking them out, then you can access them on SWE's website by scrolling down to the On-Demand section dated October 26th-30th.

We are all looking forward to next year's WE21 conference and hoping it can be in-person in Indianapolis, IN!

On Thursday, May 21st, SWE-ECI hosted a virtual happy hour and celebration for the end of SWE's fiscal year. We all enjoyed each other's company through a fun ice breaker, led by Jill Nagle, and casual conversation. President, Kristen Wagner, gave a brief overview of the benefits of registering for a SWE Society membership since the fiscal year starts July 1st and announced the winners of SWE-ECI's annual awards. We ended the happy hour with a raffle, as well!

SWE-ECI's FY20 Award Winners were: 

WE19's theme was We Live, We Learn, We Lead; and that is exactly what six SWE-ECI members did at the conference! All members attended multiple sessions across the three days, Nov. 7th - 9th. Four of our six members recruited for their respective companies. On Thursday, Nov. 7th, two SWE-ECI members, Kelly Hentges and Kristen Wagner, along with three other ladies from PepsiCo, presented a session on "Five Different Perspectives on Creating Food from Seed to Shelf". There were over 100 attendees at this session! On Friday night, three of our Professional members got together with 15 Iowa Hawkeye collegiates to get dinner and socialize. To wrap up the conference, on Saturday, Nov. 9th, SWE-ECI received three Mission awards at the Celebrate SWE Banquet!  

• Gold Award for overall great activities and involvement in professional excellence, globalization, advocacy, and diversity and inclusion.
• Best Practice - Professional Development Award
• Best Practice - Outreach Award

As part of a long standing tradition, SWE-ECI and the U of I SWE collegiate section had an enjoyable time relaxing and refueling at the Cheesecake Factory after a non-stop high energy day at the WE19 Conference in Anaheim, CA this past week. Between stellar professional development sessions, a massive career fair, and multiple thought-provoking keynote presentations there was no lack of conversation at the dinner table!​

It was a great conference, and we are all looking forward to WE20 in New Orleans, LA!

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, was the last host of SWE's annual Region H conference which was held from March 10-12 in their beautiful campus. The theme for the conference this year was, "Engineering Through the Ages." Patti Poppe, President and CEO, CMS Energy Corporation and Consumers Energy Company, and Alicia Boler Davis, Executive Vice President, General Motors Global Manufacturing, were both the Keynote Speakers for this year's conference and left us truly inspired.

Region H Conference 2017 had a mixture of professional/collegiate development sessions, networking opportunities, and a career fair with employers from around the region. A group of our very own SWE-ECI Core Board members formed a panel to answer questions on what the day to day working life of an engineer is like, dos and don'ts in the workplace, how to maintain work/life balance, setting career goals, and any other questions the attendees had for one of the sessions. It was well attended, and the panel helped guide the future of the engineering workforce.
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SWE-ECI was also awarded the following three awards and we are extremely proud of the accomplishments:

• Continuous Improvement Award (added a new position, Special Event Coordinator, to attract those individuals who'd still like to be involved but do not have the bandwidth to commit as a core-board member)
• Large Section Membership Retention Award
• Large Section Membership Growth Award

Going forward, WE Local is going to replace the region conferences and we welcome you to join SWE at any of the future WE Local's. Click here for more information.

The Kernels couldn't pull out a win against the Snappers, but we had many members win our annual awards!  The winners are:

On May 18th, SWE-ECI hosted our 3rd annual picnic. This year we ran ladder ball and bags tournaments, dined out on Nelson's BBQ, and distributed the membership awards.  Thanks to all the engineers, family, and dogs who came out!  A special congratulations to our tournament and award winners, listed below.