Society of Women Engineers hosts professional dinner

Penn's Society of Women Engineers wants to make the male-dominated world of engineering a little more feminine. In line with that goal, the student group recently held its first corporate dinner, during which members had the opportunity to hobnob with recruiters from giants such as Procter & Gamble, Trilogy, Deloitte & Touche, DuPont and IBM. The group plans to make the dinner an annual tradition. During the event, held last Monday at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel in Center City, each of the approximately 60 group members sat with one of the recruiters for dinner, then switched tables for dessert in order to have the opportunity to meet another recruiter during the evening. "We want to take advantage of those who want to take advantage of the fact that we are women," incoming SWE Internal Vice President Sarah Winnacker, an Engineering sophomore, said of the event's purpose. The idea for the dinner came from SWE seniors who realized, after interviewing for jobs, that they did not always know enough about the companies that they might be working for. The dinner culminated with a speech from Deborah Grubbe, a director of operations at DuPont, imploring women to take responsibility for their own lives in the corporate world. Noting that co-ed workplaces are more productive, Grubbe said she considers a single-sex workplace "unnatural." She added that men have told her that "we have more fun at work" with women around. However, Grubbe also said that as a supervisor, she has had to handle several types of sexual harassment cases -- men harassing women, women harassing men and same-sex harassment. But most people understand the limits of acceptable behavior, she stressed. Grubbe also noted the progress women have made in attaining high-level engineering positions, although she admitted that "there is still a long way to go." Twenty percent of current engineering graduates are women, compared with only 3 percent in 1977, she said. In addition, Grubbe said the culture of women engineers is changing. She explained that there are now women engineers of all levels of ability, whereas in the past, nearly all women engineers had superior skills than their male counterparts because they had to be able to overcome hurdles put forth by the male engineering establishment. Students and recruiters said they were pleased with the event. "I was very impressed with the caliber of women attending," said Rachel Rucker of the software company Trilogy. And Engineering freshman Veronica Lemcoff, an aspiring chemical engineer, said the event "was a great chance to learn about these companies first hand and talk one-on-one."