IME Faculty Advisor to SWE Coordinates Active Outreach Program

When she’s not involved in teaching or doing research, Dr. Colleen Phillips, an assistant professor in the IME department, serves as an advisor to WMU’s student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE – pronounced Swee). With her guidance the group has become extremely involved in outreach activities.

Dr. Colleen Phillips

SWE recently began its second year as sponsor for a FIRST Lego League (FLL) team at Portage Central Middle School. SWE members are assisting a dozen 10-to 14-year-olds in designing and building a small robot that can complete nine tasks. The robot must be able to shoot baskets, serve dinner at a small table, push chairs in at a table, climb stairs, retrieve eye glasses, move a CD into storage, and change a sign based on the sign’s color. “That final task involves artificial intelligence,” Phillips said.

Pfizer Inc. and Eaton Corporation have provided funds for the FLL competition robot.

SWE has many other activities planned. Three years ago, SWE began offering an annual Saturday workshop in February so that over 100 upper elementary school Girl Scouts could earn a “Making it Matter” engineering badge.

Because of the popularity of the workshop, Phillips said that SWE might offer two sessions this year. “We turned people away last year,” she said. Several of last year’s popular activities are also being repeated this year. These include a “Tea and Engineering” workshop for young girls and their mothers held last year at Kalamazoo Public School’s Woodward School for Technology and Research.

“Tea & Engineering” was offered last year at Woodward Elementary

Last year the first annual “Engineer for a Day” challenge pitted area high school teams against each other in a daylong event in which the teams were challenged to solve several physics-type problems.

SWE President Carla Siler (left) reviews the FIRST Lego League robot-building tasks with Portage Central Middle School students at the team’s first meeting in September. They are examining the competition board

SWE also plans to sponsor activities at this year’s WMU homecoming and recently sponsored a dinner table event for the college’s corporate sponsors.

While predominantly female, this year’s SWE membership includes four guys. Membership in the student chapter is free, but to qualify for scholarships and conferences, students must be official members, which costs $20 per year

Phillips earned her bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees at Purdue University. Her Ph.D. is in industrial engineering; her educational specialty and area of expertise is human factors and artificial intelligence. She came to WMU in 1999 from Louisiana Tech