Celebrating Tufts Graduate Society of Women Engineers

The national Society of Women Engineers (SWE) recently hosted WE19, the world’s largest conference for women engineers, at which Tufts University’s Graduate Society of Women Engineers (GSWE) chapter received prestigious individual and group awards recognizing its efforts to promote an inclusive engineering community at Tufts.

The SWE Mission Award for Best Practice: Leadership Development and Mentoring recognized the group for developing networking events that resulted in mentor relationships between undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty and graduate students in engineering.

The SWE Mission Award: Bronze celebrated the group’s ability to foster an inclusive community that welcomes students from all fields of study, gender identities, and experiences, including students who are pregnant or parenting. The national SWE organization particularly noted Tufts GSWE’s success at building a community of graduate women through social and professional initiatives.

The New Group Award congratulated GSWE on its early success at Tufts and acknowledged the group as a strong advocate for the advancement of women engineers in industry, education, and the community.

Jessica Stieglitz, one of the two co-founders of Tufts GSWE and a Ph.D. student in Chemical and Biological Engineering, also received a Graduate SWE Outstanding Individual Award for her leadership at Tufts and for her excellence in chemical and biological engineering.

“These awards are tremendously meaningful for us because they recognize and highlight the hard work that the leadership of GSWE has contributed towards providing resources and support for graduate women in engineering at Tufts,” said Stieglitz. “We plan on using the momentum of these achievements to bring in new leadership to further our professional development, mentoring, and community-building efforts.”

Tufts GSWE was established in 2016 to address the challenges faced by women graduate students in engineering. The group empowers its members to advance their education and careers through social and professional development initiatives. They host a variety of events that are open to graduate students from all engineering departments and gender identities.

Upcoming events include networking coffee hours, craft extravaganzas, undergraduate mentoring lunches for engineering majors interested in graduate school, and a networking dinner with other local SWE groups.

If you’d like to learn more about Tufts GSWE or get involved, reach out to the group at tuftsgraduateswe@gmail.com or visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TuftsGSWE.