My Week on @IAmSciComm

Call me Madam President

I can't tell you all how proud I am to be a part of this group! Also what better time than now to announce that I will be @SBU_GWISE President for the 2019-2020 academic year! #WomenInSTEM #WomenInScience #WomenLeaders https://t.co/OakzXNzBYg

— Caitlyn Cardetti (@CaitlynCardetti) May 7, 2019

Okay, so I already announced it on Twitter but I am more than happy to say it again. I am really looking forward to being the president of  Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (GWiSE) at Stony Brook University for the 2019-2020 academic year!

I cannot express in words how excited I am for this opportunity! Over my three years here at SBU, I have really seen GWiSE grow. And the rest of campus has noticed it too. All our hard work (e-board and general members) has paid off and GWiSE received the Jerrold L. Stein Student Life Award from the Graduate School Organization for being an Outstanding Organization Award last month.

On that note, I wanted to reflect on how I got involved with GWiSE and where I hope GWiSE is headed.

My first year here, I was a "general member" and would occasionally show up to some of the social events including a bike repair night that had pizza and a brown bag lunch. You know, the typical grad student event where you attend because you're hungry and they are serving food where the price is right, aka free. But somehow I ended up at the end of the year town hall meeting where they were looking for people to join the following year's executive board (e-board). I will be honest, I mainly went because they were once again having free lunch and I had a spare moment - but something possessed me to last minute throw my hat in the ring to be more involved. Literally last minute, as they were packing up the submissions and I was like wait, let me fill one out quick...

Anyway, I ended up getting the role of managing the GWiSE Twitter which was fine by me because I love Twitter! (P.S. You better follow me @CaitlynCardetti). But as this past year progressed, opportunities for more responsibilities came up and I took more and more on (some I even just purely made up) including event planning, Facebook, creating/sending out the newsletters, starting a book club, co-founding the SBU Grad Moms group, etc. And we had some really awesome events, my two favorites being hosting Dr. Elaine DiMasi, a personal friend and the physicist who ran for Congress in our district discuss her experience in politics (watch a video of her talk here) and then the Women in STEM Research Showcase.

I was happy I was able to contribute at a higher level this past year as an e-board member and I believe I will be able to contribute even more as GWiSE President next year. My main mission as President will be sustainability. I believe we've really elevated our standing as a school club to a true, well recognized  organization and I want this high level to continue to be attainable long after the current active members are gone. So to do this I want to make sure we have well-written documentation of how to manage our different e-board roles, have regular meetings with the Dean of the Graduate School and create and maintain more relationships with other organizations and centers on campus. I'm also hoping to fight to get GWiSE a seat on the Graduate School Council because really they could use more student perspective on that panel and preferably a diverse one (right now there is one student on the panel).

But if I could only say one thing about being on the GWiSE e-board, it would be that it has given me an amazingly supportive group of friends, all of which started with just wanting a slice of free pizza.

Anyway, keep up with SBU GWiSE on our blog to learn about the other members of the GWiSE Executive Board. And of course, follow us on Facebook and Twitter since I will still be running that for the next month.

And if you're interested, I had mentioned GWiSE in this past blog post: Supporting Women (and other minorities) in STEM.

Supporting Women (and other minorities) in STEM

Last week, I touched a bit on the isolation you feel when in grad school (re: this post) which brings me to this week's topic: Women in STEM

Believe it or not I'm a woman in science everyday 👩🏻‍🔬 Happy #WomenInScience Day! #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/MAjauQqMKi

— Caitlyn Cardetti (@CaitlynCardetti) February 11, 2019

Being a woman in STEM can come with it's own set of feelings of isolation and feelings that you don't belong (i.e. sexism, microaggressions, harassment, discrimination, etc). While we could talk for days upon days on these issues, I want to only talk about one aspect of being a woman in STEM today - and that's finding your support network.

I am very fortunate because I am in a department where my peers are fairly equal in number for being males and females which is extremely important. Why is this important? Well, studies have shown that women in Ph.D. programs that have more women are more likely to graduate (read more about that here). I am also fortunate because my peers are very supportive of each other; males and females.

I honestly couldn't do grad school without my pharm fam. This is my cohort taking some much needed respite. We orally defended our qualifying proposals this past week after spending the last few months writing them. Love you all! #phdchat pic.twitter.com/AgfpBIwr32

— Caitlyn Cardetti (@CaitlynCardetti) January 27, 2019

But I know many grad students out there are not so lucky, in which case I want to point them to resources outside of their department.

Here at Stony Brook University, we have an amazing organization and community, the Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (GWiSE).

The GWiSE mission is to enhance the scientific, professional, and personal development of graduate women pursuing STEM degrees at Stony Brook University and provide a space for dialogue on issues unique to women in science. To sum it up, it is about amazing women doing amazing things. We're all about supporting each other, socializing and science. But this group is so much more than just women supporting other women, we support everyone. We have male allies in our club, we have non-STEM majors in our club. We want STEM and quite frankly, our world to be a space where everyone is welcome so that is what we strive for and hope to reflect in everyone of our events.

We're loving the turn out tonight at our Women In STEM Research Showcase. Thank you for supporting #WomenInSTEM here at @GradSBU pic.twitter.com/lU4nJrrM5Z

— SBU GWISE (@SBU_GWISE) April 4, 2019

Many campuses, have their own form of GWiSE in some form or another. But if you don't have this group on your campus, start one! It will be a lot of work but I promise you, if you build it they will come.

If you need assistance forming a club, many national organizations (see list of resources below) will assist you with form a chapter. SBU GWiSE is not-associated with any national chapters as this allows us to not need to collect dues, we are funded through the graduate student fees through the Graduate School Organization (GSO). SBU GWiSE is also a pretty new organization, we've only been here about four years but every year we are growing and gaining traction. If you're at SBU, join us (check out our upcoming events on Facebook or join our mailing list).

Additional Reading/Resources:

Most Successful Women Surround Themselves with Other Women

500 Women Scientists

American Association of University Women (AAUW)

American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES)

Association for Advocacy of Women in Science and Medicine (AAWSM)

Association for Women in Science (AWIS)

Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) National Organization

#MeTooSTEM

National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCCHE)

Society for Women Engineers (SWE)

Do you have a similar organization on your campus? Do have any other resources or interesting articles relating to this topic? Please share them below in the comments.