Silicon Valley Women in Engineering Conference — Creating Community and Nurturing Engineering Identity

This innovative practice paper presents a work-in progress project that aims to nurture engineering identity development of women engineering students. Affirmative engineering identity development helps women students better chart a successful academic and professional trajectory. Participating in communities of practice furthers their identity development process. This paper describes the 2017 Silicon Valley Women in Engineering Conference in which students learned from and socialized with role models from industry, as well as reflected upon how what they were learning was aligned with their sense of their own professional identities. Examining the impact of attending the conference has produced some promising insights as we strive to create viable career pathways into fields where women have heretofore been significantly underrepresented.