IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2017 - 6

communities around the world. "With
my own story, I feel it's important to
share why I care about giving back," she
explains. "So, I will be asking for those
types of stories and supporting new programs, such as an essay contest, where
high school students can find and interview those deserving female researchers,
practitioners, and leaders."
To effectively engage women in
attracting adolescents (both girls and
boys) to engineering technology, PasikDuncan aims for sustainable models of
outreach that can be scaled across the
organization. This includes preparing
e-books and videos that demonstrate the
excitement of engineering in different
languages and are easily accessible to
anyone who wants to use them.

Driving Innovation and Collaboration
Pasik-Duncan designed these programs
as a way to achieve her goals as IEEE
WIE chair after having tested many
of them throughout her decades-long
career in academia. She has long been a
proponent of driving innovation in teaching methods, aiming to integrate her
research in areas of stochastic systems
and stochastic adaptive control into her
lessons in a way that makes the research
accessible to a broad audience. That's
why forming connections across government, industry, and academia-as well as
across generations and global communities-is of central importance to her.
"Collaboration has always been my
goal throughout my life," she says. "In
my university courses, I always bring in
former students who are now successful
leaders in industry as a way to energize
and inspire my students. A vice president
for Uber came to my class recently, and
who can describe the complex problems of
industry better than he can? If I said those
things, it wouldn't be the same. It makes
for a wonderful partnership between industry and academia, and we all benefit."
Collaboration is also a major theme
in the talks she gives around the world.
As founder of the Women in Control
Group, Pasik-Duncan has been invited
to share her story and experiences at
numerous workshops, visiting Taipei,
Budapest, Prague, India, and other loca-

IEEE women in engineering magazine

tions in the last year alone. "My 'Five
Cs' talk focuses on curiosity, creativity,
connection, communication, and collaboration," she describes. "By using
them, we can accomplish a lot together
toward solving complex problems for
the next generations."
Guiding the next generation has
always been a core component of her
efforts, not only at home with daughter Dominique but in her outreach
efforts through the various organizations with which she's affiliated. She
has organized, chaired, and supported many workshops in STEM fields
around the world and leads the University of Kansas's annual Math Awareness Month efforts, a competition for
elementary, middle, and high school
students in mathematics.
"I call this the broader impact of
our work," says Pasik-Duncan. "This is
exactly what I mean when I talk about
giving back to the community. You
can attract these students-especially
if you bring women as role models for
young girls-and they will say, 'If she
can do it, I can do exactly the same,'
and it creates a love of STEM in the
next generation."
Through all her efforts, Pasik-Duncan's message is one of bringing various
pieces together to inspire enthusiasm
and excitement among all, and she's
looking forward to doing so on behalf
of IEEE WIE. "These are my models
for engaging women around the world
for these important goals," she shares.
"To have the responsibility to attract
new generations and to advocate and
raise the visibility of women so that they
will know about all the opportunities
they can have is something I value very
much. When you're at the place in your
career that I'm at now, it's important to
give back to the community, and that's
why I took this position, though I know
it won't be easy."
Even with her historical models of
programs in place, scaling those efforts
across all 22,000+ members is a new
challenge for Pasik-Duncan, all while
she maintains her same level of teaching hours, research, and outreach.
She's grateful for the support of the

june 2017

staff members working with her ("Oh
my goodness, how I enjoy working with
them every day!" she exclaims) and is
energized by the challenge and responsibility she now faces.
One immediate role she was excited
to assume was that of hostess. IEEE
WIE's annual meeting for 2017 was held
in her hometown of Warsaw, Poland,
in April. "My committee [was] there as
well as the liaisons from Societies and
coordinators of Regions and Divisions all
across WIE," she explains. "I [was] absolutely thrilled to show all these women
someplace I love beyond imagination.
This is how lucky I am!"
-Leslie Prives

Making MOVEs

Truck fills a disaster-assistance need
Mary Ellen Randall knew that she wanted to do something for the community, but what? Determined to help in
some way, Randall, who serves as IEEE
director and vice president of Member
and Geographic Activities (MGA), sat
down with a group of volunteers to
brainstorm how IEEE Members could
best put their engineering skill sets and
problem-solving talents to use in providing disaster relief.
Shortly after the meeting, as so
many sat helplessly watching the footage of Hurricane Sandy, the team recognized a need. With significant power
outages, hard-hit residents relied on
neighbors and local businesses with
generators to help them charge their
phones-their only connection to relatives, news information, alerts, and
updates on services and closures. Randall and her team realized that what
was needed in areas hard hit by disaster were communication support and
services, and they knew they could
help with that need.
Randall spent 22 years at IBM in a
number of managerial and technical
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2017.2675239
Date of publication: 9 May 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2017