MENTORSHIP

WCE Mentorship Initiatives

What is Mentorship?

The act of mentorship allows members within a community to connect with each other, share their knowledge and skills, and gain valuable insights on topics that they themselves may need guidance in. For women who are working in the field of engineering, mentorship is considered a vital foundation that helps to provide support for one another.

WCE Mentorship Mission

Provide a safe place for members to connect
Develop a reliable, supportive community outside of work
Encourage diversity in discussion topics from technical to career development
Create lifelong connections
Encourage peer-to-peer support

Upcoming Events

Check out our Events page for upcoming events!

WCE’s Peer-to-Peer Approach

One of the main concepts of mentorship is “anyone can be a mentor,” and we want to promote this through our different event types. Our main mentorship mixer aims to engage with mentors from different experience levels and seniority, whether they have 5 or 25 years of experience.

We want to provide an opportunity for our intermediate members to flex their mentoring muscles and encourage them to offer their experience to our younger members. In contrast, we want the same for our more experienced members, where they can find others with similar levels of experience. The idea is to emphasize that mentorship is not limited to senior members offering guidance to younger members; rather, it can occur among peers as well. Anyone can be a mentor!

Mentorship Program Elements

Annual In-Person Fall Event

Our annual mentorship mixer offers great opportunities for mentees and mentors from various industries to connect with each other. Since its inception, we have held this event with the goal of matching mentors and mentees under current relevant discussion topics. Topics have included burnout, career transitions, and adapting to the new norm. The rotating style of the event easily allows participants to touch on pertinent discussion topics and meet others in the industry.

Annual Virtual Spring Event

The spring mentorship mixer aims to make mentoring more accessible to our members by holding it online. This virtual mixer is a novel and unique experience that brings mentorship to the comfort of your home. Mentees and mentors are divided into breakout rooms, and desired topics are chosen beforehand using the same format as the in-person fall event.

Quarterly Group Sessions (virtual or in person)

With our new group session initiative, we aim to provide a more intimate mentoring experience. These smaller virtual events feature one or two mentors and approximately ten mentees. This is a great opportunity to connect with the WCE community in a more casual and quieter environment and with a shorter time commitment than our larger events.

Continual Drop-In Mentorship

The drop-in mentorship initiative provides a chance for our members to ask their ongoing mentorship-related questions via an anonymous form on our website. With this format, we are hoping the WCE community can have the support they need throughout the year, in addition to connecting with mentors at our events. We aim to answer these questions as part of our newsletters and social media campaigns so that all our members can benefit.