Cal Poly Society of Women Engineers Honors Five Outstanding Members

January 25, 2010

Contact: Amy Hewes
Cal Poly Engineering
805-756-6402
ahewes@calpoly.edu

The Cal Poly Society of Women Engineers (SWE), in cooperation with Lockheed Martin, announced the recipients of the 2010 Outstanding Women in Engineering and Technology Award at this year's Evening With Industry held on Thursday, January 21 at the San Luis Obispo Embassy Suites. In addition, SWE named Lee McFarland from Mechanical Engineering as "Most Supportive Professor," and presented $30,000 in scholarships at the gala.

Cal Poly Society of Women Engineers Honors Five Outstanding Members

At the dinner banquet, those students highlighted for their outstanding accomplishments were joined by 70 industry representatives from 32 companies, including Amazon, Northrop Grumman, Chevron, Cisco, Yahoo, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Yahoo and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Outstanding Women in Engineering and Technology winners were chosen using four criteria: faculty recommendations, demonstrated leadership, related work experience and grade point average. Each of the winners is actively engaged in several extracurricular activities. The winners include:

·         Allison Holmgren, an industrial engineering graduate student from Pleasanton, CA, is a five-year member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, and participated in PolyHouse 2008, a student managed home renovation project for a deserving family. Holmgren is also a Cal Poly Dean's List recipient (for a GPA of 3.5 or above) for 10 quarters, a member of engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, and she served as an air warfare systems intern at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, AZ, where she also earned certification as a Certified Raytheon Six Sigma Specialist.

·         Jessica Paz, an industrial engineering senior from San Luis Obispo, CA, served as president of Cal Poly's Engineering Student Council and worked on the interior design aspects of the PolyHouse 2009 program. Jessica is a National Science Foundation scholarship winner, a member of Tau Beta Pi and Alpha Pi Mu honor societies, and was involved with the Spanish Medical Study Abroad Program in Buenos Aires.

·         Cameron Schlemer, a senior industrial engineering student from San Luis Obispo, CA, has been on the Industrial Engineering Student Fee Committee since 2006 and is an officer in the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Cameron was also a project manager on the PolyHouse 2008 project, and has been a Dean's List recipient for four quarters. She interned with Boeing in Washington. She is minoring in Psychology.

·         Roshani Patel, a civil engineering senior from Bakersfield, CA, is the Vice President of Community Service for the Cal Poly chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. She served as the captain's assistant for the Concrete Canoe, which won first place in the ASCE National Daniel W. Mead Student Paper Contest in 2009. Roshani was a part of the NSF-Sponsored Seismic Soil-Structure Interaction Project, where she prepared, tested, and calibrated model instrumentation for structural models and worked with a research team to perform a dynamic centrifuge model experiment at UC Davis. Roshani maintains a GPA of 3.93.

·         Alyssa Daw, a software engineer senior from Redmond, WA, has been active in SWE since 2006, serving as Vice President of Public Relations and Network Director, among other positions. Daw competed as a Cross Country and Indoor/Outdoor Track and Field scholar-athlete, and for her commitment to women's equality, she has won the Farrer Scholarship. She served as a Google software engineer test intern, and has achieved a 3.99 GPA to date.

The five honorees each $100 gift certificate to El Corral from Lockheed Martin.

Photo caption: Outstanding Women Engineers from left to right: Cameron Schlemer, Alyssa Daw, Allison Holmgren, Roshani Patel and Jessica Paz

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