The Senate has held 2 communication calls since the meeting in Chicago.  Call #1 focused on Membership and Engagement.  MI121 Focuses on this topic too and the team is requesting info from sections.  Please see the Mega Issues Page for more information.  Call #2 was held just last weekend and helped prepare us for the meeting in Houston in a few weeks.

There are several motions in front of the Senate right now.  Please review the Motions Page for details on all the motions.  Please let us know if you have any questions comments or concerns about them.

We would also like to hold another call before the meeting to discuss these with you all.

Tuesday February 7th at 7 MDT, (6 PDT)

 Conference Dial-in Number: (559) 546-1000
Participant Access Code: 1088219#

Please provide us with any questions you may have before the call.  You can contact us through the “Contact Page” or through our emails, found in our bios.

If you have anything you want to see from your Senators, please let us know at anytime.

Happy New Year!

-Amy Jo

The first Senate meeting was a great success.   To start the meeting, the Senate was given a short presentation on the basics of Robert’s Rules of Order conducted by parliamentarian.  The consent agenda was approved with S-1205 removed for a clarification question, once asked the motion was voted on and passed without changes.  The SWE Reserves Task Force reported on their work to supplement S-1202 and the motion was voted on and passed.  The results of all the motions can be found on the motion page.   The rest of the meeting was spent working on brain storming and information gathering for the Mega Issues teams.  Keep your eyes out for a survey coming from either team.  Your participation is appreciated.  For minutes of the meeting, please check the Communities.

As always, please feel free to contact any of your Senators at anytime with questions, comments, concerns.

Happy Halloween!

We have completed our training for the year and have also completed voting on one motion.

The first motion that was presented to the FY12 Senate was S-1201: Request the Society Nominating Committee Complete FY13 Senate Nominations for Deputy Speaker and Senate Secretary.  This motion passed and more information can be found in the Communities.

The motions that are in front of the Senate can be found on the Motions Page.  Please provide us with any feedback you may have.

Another way that we want to collect feedback and increase communications with our members this year is to hold telecoms prior to Senate Meetings.  We would like to old this first call on

Wednesday October 5th at 7 MDT, (6 PDT)

 Conference Dial-in Number: (559) 546-1000
Participant Access Code: 1088219#

Please provide us with any questions you may have before the call.  You can contact us through the “Contact Page” or through our emails, found in our bios.

If you have anything you want to see from your Senators, please let us know at anytime.

Attached are the slides presented by the Senators at the Region Meeting held on Sunday May 22, 2011

Please contact a Senator if you have any questions/concerns or post comments here.

Thank you

Per the Society Bylaws the Senate is tasked with filling the vacancy. The senate will be voting for the next Director of Membership Initiatives starting on June 4th.

If you have any comments, about the nominees, please send those comments to Governor Kerrie Greenfelder at Kerrie.Greenfelder@swe.org no later than Thursday, June 2nd. Kerrie will compile all of the feedback for transmittal to the Region B Senators on Friday, June 3rd. After June you may contact the Senators directly, please cc Kerrie.

Here is the message from the SWE Parlimentarian which describes the voting process.

Greetings,

The SWE election has resulted in one of the current board members being elected to another position, so as of July 1 there will be a vacancy. The SWE bylaws provide that the senate fills vacancies, as they represent members from the membership. I will be sending out your ballot and information this evening – this is a test and explanation of the process that we will be using.

At the special conference call meeting, there were seven nominations for this position. With so many nominations the odds increase that it would take more than one ballot to achieve a majority if each ballot were handled separately. A better way is to use the method of preferential voting, also called instant runoff voting. With this method, you are asked to rank all of the candidates in order of your preference. It is important that you put ALL of the candidates in order of your preference. When all of the ballots are in, they will be sorted according to the first choices, like the example below:

SAMPLE TALLY SHEET:

30 ballots cast

A received 10
B received 2
C received 2
D received 7
E received 5
F received 1
G received 3

A majority of 30 is 16, so there is no election on the first ballot. As F received the fewest votes, that vote is re-allocated to the second choice on the ballot. The second round tally looks like this:

A received 10
B received 2
C received 2
D received 8
E received 5
G received 3

Still no majority, so B and C are both re-allocated to their second choices. Here’s the tally:

A received 11
D received 11
E received 5
G received 3

Still no majority, so G is re-allocated to the second choice. (If the second choice has already been eliminated, we continue down the preference until we get to someone who is still in.)

Next tally:

A received 12
D received 13
E received 5

So it’s time to re-allocate the E votes:

A received 14
D received 16

D is the winner of the election – and each person’s vote only counts once.

I will be sending an email to you from voting@agreatmeeting.com. Please look for it and if you don’t find it, check your junk mail and spam folders. In the email I’ll give you the seven names. Reply directly to that email with the list sorted from first preference to last. I’ll take care of the rest, and send the results to the speaker. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU LIST ALL SEVEN NAMES SO THAT YOUR PREFERENCES CAN BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT. It does not help the process (or help your choice get elected) if you withhold votes; that only works when there are multiple candidates for multiple positions and the ratio needed is a plurality.

Ballots are due by midnight EDT Tuesday, June 7. Ballots received after that time will not be counted. Only direct replies to the email will be accepted, except that if you must forward because of work or travel, please explain the path in the email to verify that it is your vote being cast.

Colette Collier Trohan, CPP-T, PRP
A Great Meeting, Inc.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns – please contact a Region Senator or post your comment here.
Deb Willems
deb.willems@swe.org

Creation of Senate Secretary – added a secretary position to the senate to take care of all administrative duties including communication to the senate, agenda preparation, minute documentation, etc.
Senate Procedure – outlines composition of senate, duties of officers and members, meeting procedures, etc.
Changed procedures to allow senate to take care of nominating ballot (as opposed to nominating committee) for senate positions.
The Annual Strategic Planning Review Session also took place to discuss what goals & objectives SWE is to focus on in FY12 – SWE has an ongoing 3-5 year planning horizon strategy that can be seen on the SWE website.

A 5th goal was added this year as an emerging opportunity: SWE is a first choice organization for supporting women in engineering and technology as seen by the retention and growth of its membership.

Out of these 5 goals, 4 objectives were set as a top priority for next fiscal year:

GOAL #1 – Growing the Profession – Outreach
1.1 Increase the number of women feeding the engineering/technology schools by starting a community college program and middle / high school pilot program

GOAL #2 – Professional Excellence
2.4 Increase recognition of SWE members as influential and sought after leaders as measured by the number of members participating in prestigious and influential positions, including committees and advisory boards inside and outside of SWE.

GOAL #4 – Inclusive Global Community
4.3 Restructure volunteer opportunities that are adapted to the diverse lifestyles and priorities of our members as measured by increase volunteer participation.

GOAL #5 – Membership
5.2 Increase international membership to 1000

Because of the emphasis on membership growth in the coming months, the senators had breakout groups and discussed different groups that could be targeted as possible SWE members including

Pre-College
Companies/Universities
International
Mega Issues were also discussed (all encompassing topics important to SWE) and the senate provided recommendations on the following mega issues:

MI 112 – How can SWE provide assistance to unemployed members?
MI 114 – To what extent and in what areas should SWE venture beyond STEM to issues relevant to SWE’s mission?
MI 106 – How can we empower women engineers to be successful on their own terms?
The following mega issues were placed in the strategic plan for next year

MI 107: Building awareness of gender-based bias issues in the workplace
MI 109: Work-life balance in global work world
MI 110: Work-life balance in 24/7 world.
MI 116: Inspiring industry to provide creative ways for women to contribute while attending to family needs
MI 117: Showcasing benefits of professional membership for existing and new members
MI 118: How can our members, sections, and corporate supporters manage a win-win supportive relationship at all levels of SWE to maximize benefits to each group while upholding the SWE brand and organizational structure?
MI 119: How can SWE enhance interactions between collegiate and professionals?
MI 120: Do we want to consider a pay per service membership model? If yes, what would it look like?
MI 121: How do we change the conversations from what member value SWE provides to how engaged are our members?
If you have any questions about any of the above information please direct them to one of your Region Senators.

Thanks to the region A senators for authoring this post.

After the meeting we broke up into groups for dinner where we braved the cold to see what Chicago has to offer. Our membership
Discussion continued at dinner where each team brainstormed on a topic in preparation for the Senate meeting on Saturday.
We are looking forward to another productive meeting tomorrow.
Agenda topics include:
parliamentarian procedure training
Motions on the creation of the Senate Secretary and approving a new procedure for the senate
Updates on the Mega Issues, including hearing the recommendations generated so far
Finally, the out brief from the dinner discussions on membership

We are looking forward to providing you complete details at the next region meeting in Palm Springs next month!
Please post any questions you have for us on the blog, facebook or email.

This is a great reason to attend a conference, meeting and career fair, i.e. ABJ, Annual, and Region Conferences also provide workshops which may strengthen skills and provide opportunities for jobs.

Christine Koloveas

We hope that you will consider submitting a nomination for the FY12 Senate.

Why_SWE_Senate

Thank you to the Collegiate Senators who put this together and to everyone who participated in the video.

January Telecom on Top 5 & Bottom 5 Programs & Services
The Senate leadership team is creating a summary slide for you to present to your regions which will discuss the rationale for the original inquiry, the main themes resulting from your research, and an outline of next steps.  It is important that you communicate the overall summary of the effort rather than the details of the data collected to avoid any unnecessary concern over the future of currenlty offered programs & services. This information was intended to supplement feedback from other sources and is not being used to cut or promote services. This was not an effort to rate or rank our programs and services. Some of our programs and services are meant to support specific communities within our organization, such as early career or joint memberships. Publishing top five/bottom five results may be misunderstood. While I may not use the career center, it does not mean its not a valuable asset to SWE. The leadership team is going through the chats and notes from the telecon and we will be providing a more comprehensive feedback to you and the BOD with conclusions and recommendations in the near future. For now, please use the provided charts for feedback to your regions.