A message from Director Dr. Cinda-Sue Davis

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the WISE Residence Program year-end banquet. As always, it was a terrific event, with wonderful company, delicious food, and lots of stories and recognition of a year well spent. It scarcely seems possible that the academic year is winding down.

Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day – Engineers to the Rescue!

The 5th Annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day brought 80 participants to North Campus on February 18, 2006. Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day is a featured activity of National Engineers Week (E-Week) held every year during February. National E-Week is sponsored by major companies including Bechtel, Boeing, DuPont, General Electric, Intel and IBM. Microsoft and Camp Caen supported the campus event by supplying prizes and souvenirs.

This year’s theme, “Engineers to the Rescue: Preventing and Responding To Disaster” was intentionally selected by the WISE office in response to recent national and international events including Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami. Click here for full story.

Parenting in the Academy

Co-sponsored by WISE and the Rackham Graduate School Office of Student Life, February’s Parenting in the Academy panel was an opportunity for both male and female graduate students in the science and engineering fields to learn how faculty and staff in these disciplines attempt to balance their parenting and academic responsibilities. Panelists provided honest pictures of the balancing act of the academic parent.Click here for full story.

WISE RP's Lillian Prize

Now in it's seventh year, the Lilian Prize Scholarship was awarded to WISE RP resident Leah Ettema, a Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME) student, for her essay, "Small Cells, Big Impact, " which focuses on science, engineering and ethics.

From 1935-1936, Lillian Waratt lived in Mosher Jordan Residence Hall at the University of Michigan and was studying to become a dental hygienist. During a time when it was very unusual to see a woman pursuing a college degree in science or engineering, it was exceptional that Lillian, one of four children from an immigrant family that had suffered during the depression, dedicated herself to earning this certificate.Click here for full story.

AWIS-WISE lunch discussion with evolution speaker Linda Partridge

In March a dozen graduate and undergraduate women enjoyed a lunch discussion at Zanzibar, a downtown Ann Arbor restaurant, with Professor Linda Partridge, a Distinguished Lecturer in the Evolution Theme Semester series at UM. Partridge is a Professor of Biology at the University College London. Her research group has done ground-breaking work on the evolutionary genetics of senescence (aging).Click here for full story.