“Our main focus this semester, as always, is empowering young women to become leaders in all aspects of the technology industry,” said Fatima Azfar (CS 3rd yr/M.S. candidate MCS), marketing manager for the Association of Computing-Machinery-Women at Illinois Tech. The group’s first general body meeting of spring 2018 will be held on Tuesday, January 30 at 12:45 p.m. in Perlstein Hall, Room 108.

Among other activities, the group plans to continue an effort they started last year, partnering with Women’s Energy Network (WEN) to align students with professional mentors in the field through networking events. Every month they will hold a “show and tell” session, where students can share their own personal projects with fellow classmates. They will be at the prestigious Women Engineers Code (WECode) Conference at Harvard University, March 2-4.

Last year, the group organized a Cyber Security Summit and Hackathon at Illinois Tech, hosted GitHub and LinkedIn workshops, among others, and held luncheons with Eunice Santos, Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair of Computer Science and professor of computer science; Sherrie Littlejohn (M.S. CS ’82) , Illinois Tech Trustee and CS Advisory Board member; and Barbara Johnson (IE ’80), cybersecurity management consultant.

The ACM-W chapter at Illinois Tech, founded in 2016, supports and mentors students interested in computing across a variety of different majors. While membership is primarily women, the group also welcomes male allies who are committed to assuring that more diverse voices are heard in the computing industry. ACM-W holds weekly online voice chats to share news, events, and other relevant updates, and they host monthly events to help build a community among members. Their affiliation with the national ACM-W professional association helps them bring in guests from industry for luncheons and special events.

To learn more about Illinois Tech’s ACM-W chapter, visit their website.