UTRGV Society of Women Engineers present during a students organization recruitment event.
PHOTO COURTESY SOCIETY OF WOMEN ENGINEERS
The underrepresented faction of the engineering program has banded together to create a space to support all UTRGV women studying the field and its branches.
Samantha Garcia, a mechanical engineering senior and president of the Society of Women Engineers at UTRGV, said the student organization came together because “women are the minority in engineering.”
Garcia said the Society of Women Engineers offers professional development, such as resume-building workshops where members can build their resumes and have them reviewed by an ExxonMobil company member.
ExxonMobil is a natural gas company that works closely with the Society of Women Engineers and typically sends a recruiter to advise the resume workshops, according to Garcia.
Beyond workshops, the society also gets together for social networking events that focus on raising money for the organization.
The Society of Women Engineers is open to all engineering majors, including men, according to Garcia.
“You can be a computer science major, you can be electrical, you can be manufacturing, you can be mechanical … as long as you’re within the branch of engineering,” she said.
PHOTO COURTESY SOCIETY OF WOMEN ENGINEERS
Sawyer Ramos, a computer science junior, said she has noticed there are more men than women in her engineering classes.
Mariajose Casas, a cybersecurity freshman who previously took cybersecurity classes in high school, said in her four years of high school, her class consisted of 15 people, and of those, only three were women.
Casas added she felt the organization “helps and allows women in STEM” to understand that they’re not alone.
“It’s very admirable that they’re creating that space for women. … They’re contributing something very impactful to UTRGV,” Ramos said, who had heard about the society before through a presentation during Vaquero Roundup.
Garcia said a common struggle women face, including herself, is entering the field with “barriers of wanting to be equal … wanting to make [themselves] known … [and prove they’re] smart enough to be here.”
“It doesn’t matter what major you come from. It doesn’t matter what background you come from. We’re all here to support you,” she said.
The impact Garcia said she hopes the Society of Women Engineers has is for more women to join engineering and not give up chasing their dreams, even when they doubt themselves.
