Paige Smith Visits Petroleum Institute

Dr. Paige Smith, the Director of the Women in Engineering program (WIE) at UMD, visited the Arzanah campus March 20-22, 2011 and conducted a three-day Workshop. The focus of Dr. Smith’s activities was twofold. First, she worked with AUP, WISE and Student Affairs representatives with regard to community outreach and recruiting initiatives. Her first morning session addressed these aspects from a broad perspective. The second afternoon session focused more on recruiting students from “minority” backgrounds, which in the PI context is interpreted as Emiratis, as they make up a small portion of the overall population (~15 %) and often have had fewer opportunities to develop their academic skills (they are, however, the majority of the PI’s student population). She had a lunch meeting with the Recruiting Task Force Committee), presented a workshop on “Planning Strategies for Student Recruitment” (with Recruiting Task Force members), a workshop on “Student Recruitment and Retention” (with WISE students and WISE administration), and a workshop on how to plan, organize and implement summer camps for high school students focused on math, science and English skills (with the AUP Task Force).

The second component of Dr. Smith’s contributions was in the area of faculty mentoring. She presented a workshop on establishing faculty mentoring programs at an institutional and departmental level. Dr. Youssef Abdel-Majid, the Dean of the Engineering school at PI, contributed to the workshop by discussing PI’s efforts on this front. Participants were the CELT Director, Dr. Brian Bielenberg, Chairs of the Engineering Departments, and interested faculty. Dr. Smith also met with faculty to discuss preparing for promotion and supporting junior faculty planning to apply for promotion in Fall 2011 or 2012, who are in the process of putting together a promotion file. Pictured: Dr. Nadia al Hassani and Dr. Smith

The workshops conducted by Dr. Paige Smith on recruiting, mentoring and summer programs were very much appreciated by all the participants at PI. The PI management communicated their desire for further involvement, possibly for an extended period of time, to further benefit from Dr. Smith’s expertise. She will be invited to spend one or more weeks at the PI to provide further guidance to concerned programs. Pictured: Dr. Smith and Dr. Nazari meeting with women faculty at PI, the Director of Student Affairs and the Director of AUP.