Experience is widely recognized as one of life’s most effective teachers, and organizers of the upcoming 2023 Susan M. Arseven ’75 Conference for Women In Science and Engineering (WISE) guarantee multiple opportunities to learn from some of the best within the STEM professions and Aggieland next month on the Texas A&M campus.
Registration opened today (Jan. 30) for the popular annual WISE Conference, which is celebrating its 31st anniversary this year and set to be presented Saturday, Feb. 25, in Room 2400 of the Memorial Student Center. This year’s theme, Through the Looking Glass: Promoting Transparency in STEM, focuses on exploring open communication and expectations across STEM career narratives and uncovering pathways to success in a variety of fields while simultaneously working to ensure more equitable access for all.
The event will feature a day of common ground, conversation and inspiration among friends in a series of interactive presentations featuring speakers who will share their insights gained along the journey from diploma to career and all points in between. Topics include gaining personal and professional confidence, barriers to career achievement, data transparency in STEM and much more.
"This conference is an excellent opportunity for undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral fellows and faculty in STEM to connect and engage in diverse perspectives," said 2022-2023 WISE President Gayle Bornovski '20, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry.
The daylong conference (see schedule), annually organized and hosted by Texas A&M Arts and Sciences Outreach, will feature a keynote presentation by Kimberly Hambuchen, Acting Deputy of the International Space Station (ISS) Systems Engineering and Integration Office at NASA. As an expert in developing novel methods for remote supervision of space robots over intermediate time delays, she has been working to make them more usable by humans for more than two decades — a career into which she says she fell backwards. Hambuchen will present an honest look at the experience of being one of few women in a sea of male colleagues and the perspective of seeing a transformative change during the course of her career that has seen a number of female colleagues joining her field.
The complete list of speakers includes two former students from Lonza, which is a corporate sponsor of the conference, and a representative from Dow, as well as various professors from the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, School of Architecture, and College of Arts and Sciences.
The conference is named in honor of the late Dr. Susan M. Arseven ’75, one of the leading strategists in information technology during a career spanning several disciplines and a pioneering example of Aggie leadership. Thanks to generous funding from a permanent endowment established 20 years ago in support of the conference on its 10th anniversary in 2002 through the Texas A&M Foundation by Arseven’s husband, biostatistician and 1974 Texas A&M statistics Ph.D. graduate Dr. Ersen Arseven, the event also showcases the Susan M. Arseven Make-A-Difference Memorial Award — two $1,000 awards presented to graduate students pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees in science, engineering or technology as part of the conference.
The conference registration fee is $50 ($35 for students) and includes a pre-conference reception on Friday, Feb. 24, at Benjamin Knox Gallery and a conference swag bag. Participants are encouraged to register online before the Feb. 22 deadline. The Texas A&M Good Bull Fund is generously sponsoring registration fees for the first 80 students. Additionally, interested parties are encouraged to check with their respective academic departments, several of which also cover registration fees.
Women In Science and Engineering (WISE) at Texas A&M is a university-recognized organization of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty and staff from various science and engineering backgrounds. The group was created to address specific problems faced by women in non-traditional fields.
For more information about the conference or other outreach events and women’s programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, visit https://artscioutreach.tamu.edu.