On Saturday, November 11th, Cal Poly SWE hosted 30 prospective female engineering students and parents onto Cal Poly campus for Fall SWE Welcome, an annual event where students get to get a taste of engineering in college. The day started with the students learning about majors in engineering at Cal Poly, and adults went through a Parent Educator Program to learn more about how to support students as they enter college. Then, students and parents got to go on a tour with Engineering Ambassadors around the campus. After lunch, 6 engineering clubs at Cal Poly, including PROVE, CubeSAT, Engineering without Borders, OSTEM, SHPE, and GrowClub talked to students about their club and engineering, as well as demonstrating cool projects they have done, and lots of show and tell! At the end of the club fair, PROVE and CubeSat took groups of students for tours around the aerospace hangar and the CubeSAT laboratory, respectively, and did a fun activity. Students got to see where Cubesat builds and tests their satellites, and PROVE showed off their electric racecar and let students sit in the driver seat! Finally, students sat down again for a presentation on how to apply to college, as well as tips from students. As a winding down activity after the long day, students bonded and made friendship bracelets together, while talking about their high school activities like robotics, where they want to go to college, and what they were excited for! After dinner, there was a Cal Poly student-led panel that was a hit with the high schoolers - they loved asking questions about engineering, college life, succeeding in classes, and personal questions like exploring life outside engineering, dealing with homesickness, and making friends.
Overall, the event was a huge hit and multiple students stayed an hour later to continue to ask questions and get contact info of the panelists. Lots of students mentioned their excitement to come back for Spring SWE Welcome, and hopefully see us all again in Cal Poly!Thank you to everyone who volunteered for Spring SWE Welcome and to all of our wonderful participants, we hope to see you on campus next fall!!
