Women on campus now have a place to go to feel enlightened, empowered and inspired. A new SRU club, The Women’s Solar Center, is an organization created by graduate students in the MBA program, Katelin McCallan and Cheyanne Crevar. Both McCallan and Crevar have been working since October to create an organization that helps prepare women for their future careers.
The idea for the organization came from a comparable group called E-Magnify from Seton Hill University. E-Magnify worked to help women with mentoring, business training and counseling. Similar to this group, SRU’s Women’s Solar Center is looking to help women with basic job preparation, networking, building relationships and more.
Dr. Diane Galbraith, Dr. Melanie Anderson and Dr. Frances Amatucci have helped Mccallan and Crevar with the creation of this organization. Their goal for the organization is to start small, then hopefully expand. The Women’s Solar Center is starting with students on campus then bringing in alumni to talk and mentor the members of the organization. After they bring in alumni, the group plans on expanding to outside of the Slippery Rock area to help other women as well.
“Women can see each other as threats, but if we can help them build relationships, that would be great,” Galbraith said.
The organization is looking to help women support and mentor one another to be successful in their careers.
“If we could help even one woman, it would be more than enough,” McCallan said.
Galbraith said one of the main priorities of the group is to touch the lives of women in a positive way, so they can, in turn, give back.
Dr. Cindy LaCom influenced McCallan in the creating stages of the organization by opening up her eyes to the kind of topics that the group will be focusing on. McCallan touched on the fact that one factor that prepared her for taking on this organization was having a mentor herself, Dr. Anderson.
“I want to hit home that I have been a student at SRU, both undergraduate and graduate, that has had a mentor during my career here, not all students have been as lucky as I have so I hope with this program we can have a close tight knit program that can mentor each other,” McCallan said.
The organization was officially recognized as a club by SGA on Monday and they have support from multiple areas including the college of business, professors, the masters program and more.
The first meeting will strictly be an informational session in ECB 111 on Feb. 2 at common hour. The meetings from then on will be every other week.
The group is planning on hosting six events, two each month up until the month of April. The first hopeful event that is still in the works of planning is bringing in speaker Renee Coyne from career services to talk about salary and negotiation techniques. McCallan said other events that are being planned will involve bringing in alumni and utilizing their expertise for students, a diversity panel, a LinkedIn workshop and how to market yourself.
There will be dues for joining the group. It will be $25 for the semester or $35 for the year. The money will be going towards bringing in speakers, events and conferences.
“My involvement is to not only mentor and give back but just make a difference in the community,” Galbraith said.
The organization has emailed the entire college and has had 40 responses.
“We would be happy with even five members with hopes to expanding later,” Mccallan said.
However, the group is not excluding anyone. Both women and men are encouraged to join with any major.
“We don’t want to just market to college of business students, we want to market to educators, to history majors, to dancers, because you will be put in situations where you need to go above and beyond and we want to take anyone and have everyone be successful,” McCallan said.
