The Path Towards WoW
When Ranjan shared his objectives of accelerating alternatives and assets for girls with the Woodruff Faculty Advisory Board, he acquired an outpouring of help, and a brand new collaboration started.
Advisory Board Chair Larry Montgomery (ME ’78), who serves as President of the Montgomery Household Basis, instructed Brown about a company at Auburn College devoted to the way forward for girls in engineering. They related with the group known as 100+ Girls Robust, arrange an on-campus assembly, and realized extra in regards to the group’s initiatives. With a want to provide again to the college that propelled their careers, Montgomery, Brown, and different board members began discussing the concept of launching the same group within the Woodruff Faculty.
“We’re across the 50th anniversary of the Woodruff Faculty’s first feminine graduate, Mary Kirkpatrick (ME ’70, MS ’72), so launching this new group now, after we are celebrating this vital milestone, simply feels proper,” stated Linda Gilday (ME ’83), Deputy Program Director of the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program at United States Navy and the latest member of the Woodruff Faculty Advisory Board.
When Gilday joined the discussions, she supplied an concept for a company title primarily based on one other program she and her husband Adm. Mike Gilday launched for the U.S. Navy, known as the WIN program. Shortly after, WoW was born.
Girls in Engineering Management Lecture Collection
As a part of WoW, and starting this fall, members of the Georgia Tech neighborhood may have the chance to community with gifted feminine students and innovators within the subject of engineering by means of a newly established Girls in Engineering Management Lecture Collection. Every semester, the Woodruff Faculty will host talks that includes notable girls engineers who’re creating a greater future for our neighborhood — domestically, nationally, and globally.
The Woodruff Faculty will kick off the lecture sequence with Robyn Gatens, director of the Worldwide House Station (ISS) within the House Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. As ISS director, Gatens leads technique, coverage, integration, and stakeholder engagement for the house station program on the company stage, together with the usage of the station for analysis and expertise demonstrations together with to help NASA’s Artemis missions, and actions to safe an ongoing U.S. presence in low-Earth orbit (LEO) by enabling a profitable, long-term personal sector business LEO house financial system. She holds a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering diploma from Georgia Tech.
Further audio system for the 2022-23 tutorial 12 months will likely be introduced within the close to future.
Wanting Forward
Off to a profitable begin, WoW has 9 founding members who’ve made a present of $1,000 for the following 5 years. Founding members embody:
- Rebeccah Brown
- Kyriaki Kalaitzidou
- Fredda Lerner
- Emily Muhlberger
- Shweta Natarajan
- Angela Sherman
- Nzinga Tull
- Kumuda Ranjan
- Tracy West
To develop into a member of WoW, donors should make a five-year funding dedication of $500-$1,000 per 12 months. As WoW expands, the group strives to award 25 scholarships to feminine mechanical engineering college students by the top of 2022.
“It’s thrilling to have the ability to give again to Georgia Tech and the Woodruff Faculty after the whole lot each have completed for us,” stated Brown. “Any assets we spend serving to feminine college students preserve their endurance and drive to come back out optimistic and profitable on the finish of their pupil expertise is a useful resource properly spent.”
For extra info on WoW or to develop into a member, go to https://mygeorgiatech.gatech.edu/giving/me-wow.
http://www.me.gatech.edu/information/women-woodruff-me-launches-new-initiative-ensure-women-thrive-georgia-tech