Building Skills in Your Career
SWE offers opportunities to plan meetings and career guidance events. If you present a paper at the National Conference or volunteer through section activities, you will gain visibility for yourself and your company. Being active in a professional organization can show your manager that you have the initiative to take on more responsibility.
Experience of Other Members
Meeting women from other companies and even reading about the careers of successful members in the SWE Magazine can provide you with role-models. Within our section, you can receive advice and even first-hand testimony on issues like getting promoted, sexual harassment, etc.
Networking
SWE offers many opportunities for gaining contacts at large and small companies. When you consider all the mergers, spin-offs, and divestitures that have occurred in the past few years, a network is a necessity.
Effect on Your Career
SWE can have a positive effect on your career especially when you need to make a career change. Besides our local section, there are nationwide resources to help your job search. Send in your information to the SWE resume database, or use the job-hunting service from the web page. The annual Career Fair, held at the Annual Conference, is another great place to find a job.
Fun
Every month it’s fun to get together with SWE friends. While some meetings are technical, SWE also coordinates events simply for socializing.
Community
The SWE Philadelphia section plans activities throughout the year that benefit the community.
Information
You can add to your business knowledge with topics like “Technical Presentations” and “Dress for Success”
Time For Yourself
Don’t you deserve a night out every once in a while? At our meetings, you can converse with a peer group that is hard to find at work or in the neighborhood. Spend less time worrying about annual dues and become a Lifetime member with a one-time fee of $2,000. Annual dues are then waived for the rest of your life.
Support
As women engineers we can feel isolated in the workplace. SWE gives you feeling of belonging, with members to reassure you that you can survive the sports and car talk.
When you join SWE as a member of the national organization, you are automatically a member of a section. The section to which you are assigned is dependent upon your home address. SWE membership is open to all women and men engineering students, engineers in all disciplines,
and non-engineers with equivalent engineering experience.
Here is a sampling of the SWE membership fees. For more information about the membership
grades, please check out the Society SWE Membership web page.
- New Professional membership dues are $120. Each year after that is $100.
- Recent Graduate dues (graduated within past 24 mos.) are $50
- K-12 Educator dues are $20
- Retired/Unemployed dues are $50
- Lifetime membership dues are $2000 `
- Joint memberships with NSBE, SHPE, and AISES also exist, as do global member fees.
NOTE: SWE membership is open to all genders. All SWE memberships coincide with the SWE fiscal year that runs from July 1 – June 30 and early renewal/join begins every April.
