The Society of Women Engineers recognizes the day of its founding as May 27, 1950, the day that the national organization finally coalesced, when more than 60 women gathered at Cooper Union in New Jersey to establish ground rules and elect their leaders.  But in a way, SWE’s true beginning, and indeed the beginning of our section, was already brewing in the late 1940’s.   

The advent of World War II had called many of our country’s young men into the armed forces, so who would step up to fill the void in the technical workforce?  Why, the ladies, of course!  Colleges and universities began to open their science and engineering schools to women, and along the eastern seaboard, female engineering students found strength in their fledgling numbers.  In 1945, Dorothy Young, Dean of Women at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, hosted a tea for the incoming class of women engineering students.  As the girls began to socialize and support each other in their coursework, they formed a chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and
were officially recognized on campus in 1949.   

As founding member Alma Kuppinger Forman recalls, in the fall of 1948, several of the students were talking about a freshmen English term paper assignment.  Phyllis Diamond stated the topic of her paper was women in engineering.  A discourse about women engineering students at other institutions followed, resulting [in] the desire of making contact with them. Soon the Drexel students were organizing a regional conference to be held on their campus in April 1949, and the Drexel chapter morphed into the Philadelphia District of SWE.  The regional conference laid the foundation for that first national convention the following year, and SWE at last was born.  As Alma puts it, “Phyllis’ term paper proved to be the catalyst for the forming of what today is an international organization.”

From its roots as a sisterhood of less than 100 pioneering young women in technical fields (with $5 annual dues!) the Society has grown to 20,000 students and professionals with $100 annual dues.  On a local level, the Philadelphia Section has evolved as well.  The story of its past 60 years is
a rich one.   

The 1950’s, as one might expect, were marked by the shaping of the new society’s identity.  Members took that identity seriously.  A national committee set out to refine the emblem of SWE, originally designed by the Drexel students, while the Philadelphia Section later publicized a warning: “Any member who attended a meeting without her SWE pin would have to pay a fine!”  Meanwhile, with the ladies thus occupied, their neglected husbands and boyfriends sought companionship via their own SWE support group of sorts, the “Men’s Artillery.”  (Men were able to join SWE as voting members when the SWE bylaws were amended in 1976.) 

Newsletters for the new group were also seeking an identity. The first issues of NO NAME and NO NAME — YET! solicited suggestions for a name from students at the six schools represented in the organization.  At the time student engineers often referred to a slide rule as a “slip stick”  – and some used the term “Slip Stick Sally” to refer to a woman engineer.   SLIP STICK SALLY was adopted for the newsletter.  However, she quickly “graduated” to SWE OUTLOOK in the spring of 1950 when the Philadelphia District was officially recognized as an organization with both student and graduated women engineers.  In those days engineering drawings were all hand lettered; these days they are computer generated – but they still have “title blocks” to provide the dates and name of the engineers who prepared or reviewed the work, as stylized in these SWE MEMOIRS. 

In 1959, the legitimacy of our section was recognized by an outside party: As noted in the May 1959 newsletter, “The PHILADELPHIA SECTION proudly announces it was accepted as an affiliate of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia at their Board of Directors’ meeting on April 23. This feat is second only to breaking the sound barrier inasmuch as the Club still has a ladies entrance, ladies lounge and “no ladies permitted” sign over the bar door. Much of the credit for the breakthru goes to Anne Johnson and Gertrude Guers for their activities in their respective technical societies and to Helen Smith who prepared SWE’s presentation to the Admissions Committee.”  Hardly a decade old, SWE Philadelphia was already making strides.  Another coup for the section came in 1964, when a former Philadelphia officer, Isabelle French, became a national SWE President. For most of the Philadelphia Section’s existence until the 1990’s, outreach was focused toward the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) and the Engineering and Technical Societies Council (ETSCO).  Philadelphia SWE member Carolyn Buggy and her husband Rodman introduced the Society to the JETS program in the Philadelphia area, and conducted the annual student competitions.  Many SWE members at the time were also active in ETSCO, whose meetings were held at the Engineers Club of Philadelphia.  ETSCO consisted of delegates from technical and professional organizations such as SWE, the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers (PSPE), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and others; allowing them to pool their resources in conducting seminars and workshops about engineering for students, teachers, and guidance counselors. Usually these programs were held in conjunction with Engineers’ Week. SWE Philadelphia routinely gave one or more workshops for high school students and would sometimes supply panelists for the teacher / guidance counselor programs.