The UH Cullen College of Engineering’s Women in Engineering Learning Community for Maximizing Excellence (WELCOME) has been nationally recognized as a model program for female students.
The Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) named WELCOME the recipient of the 2008 Women in Engineering Initiative Award. WEPAN is the nation’s leading organization working to transform the culture in engineering education to promote the success of women.
“This award puts our women-in-engineering efforts on the national map,” said Julie Trenor, director of undergraduate recruitment and founding director of WELCOME. “The program provides a model of community-building for other institutions with non-traditional student populations.”
Each year, WEPAN recognizes women-in-engineering programs nationwide that demonstrate best practices for recruiting and retaining female students. WELCOME has been recognized for its effort to create a professional and social network for female students who commute.
“Our electronic mentoring program connects incoming students with their upper-division peers, as well as students with working professionals from the Houston area,” said Trenor. “It’s often difficult for students, especially ones that commute and/or work outside of school, to find time for one-on-one meetings, which is the hallmark of most mentoring programs. However, by using an electronic format as the primary mode of communication, mentoring pairs are able to stay in regular contact. A number of our student-professional pairs have stayed in touch even after the student has graduated.”
The mentoring program has connected more than 75 students to 45 working professionals in the past two years. Trenor launched WELCOME in late 2005 with an “innovative strategies” grant from the Texas Engineering and Technical Consortium, and has since garnered support from ExxonMobil and many college alumnae.
Nearly 150 universities, colleges and community colleges are represented among WEPAN’s 600-plus members—the University of Houston is an institutional member. Trenor will begin a three-year term to serve as president-elect, president and past-president on July 1.