Engineering Diversity Workshop will Lay Groundwork for Outreach to Underrepresented Groups

Attendees at the 2015 AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety in Austin, TX (April 25–29), can help shape the Institute’s inclusiveness efforts aimed at underrepresented members of the chemical engineering workforce during a special Engineering Diversity Initiatives Planning Workshop.

The workshop — scheduled for Monday, April 27, from 9:30 to 11:30 AM, in the Austin Hilton’s Room 617 — will bring together Institute Leaders, companies’ diversity representatives, and AIChE members from underrepresented and underserved groups, including LGBT engineers and engineers with disabilities, to share experiences and ideas. Information gathered at the session will help AIChE to better align its services with the needs of those engineers and their employers, and will lay the foundation for a follow-up Diversity Summit to be held on November 10, 2015, at AIChE’s Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, UT.

The Engineering Diversity Initiatives Planning Workshop, and the subsequent Diversity Summit, will be being spearheaded by AIChE’s Societal Impact Operating Council, with collaboration from AIChE’s Minority Affairs and Women’s Initiatives committees, and other AIChE groups.

Zenaida Otero Gephardt, who chairs the Societal Impact Operating Council, says that helping all AIChE members to achieve their full professional potential is an important objective for the Institute, adding that “diversity is an essential element of a productive and resilient modern workplace.” This diversity, she notes, extends to race, gender, ethnicity, age, cognitive and learning styles, experience, education, and perspectives.

“The global marketplace and the changing demographics of the workplace have made diversity and inclusion a necessary tool for business success,” says Gephardt, who adds that a diverse workplace is known to be more productive and more effective in meeting customers’ needs. The Diversity Initiatives Planning Workshop will help organizations and individuals from all backgrounds to unite for mutual benefit. “It takes time, energy and resources to find, attract and retain a diverse workforce — but it is an investment worth making,” says Gephardt.

Leading off the April 27 workshop, Cheryl Teich, AIChE’s 2015 President, and June Wispelwey, the Institute’s Executive Director, will explain AIChE’s objectives to ensure inclusiveness. Then, a panel consisting of companies’ diversity representatives will discuss how their own organizations are promoting diversity in the workforce. Scheduled panelists include Chastity Harmon, Praxair’s Manager of College Relations and Community Involvement; Rodolfo Jimenez, STEM Coordinator at the Diversity and Community Engagement Division of UT-Austin; Audrey Goins Brichi, Manager of Diversity and Inclusion at Chevron; and Karen Horting, Executive Director of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). 

Topics of discussion will include how AIChE can better serve the career and professional needs of engineers from underserved groups; workforce reentry issues; recommendations on how industry and academic institutions can better connect with and recruit engineers from unrepresented groups; and more. Attendees will have an opportunity to share their own stories and ideas in a variety of breakout sessions.

To learn more about the Engineering Diversity Initiatives Planning Workshop, contact Stephen Smith at 646-495-1348 or steps@aiche.org.

See related interviews with Karen Horting of SWE and Audrey Goins-Brichi of Chevron.