Last semester, “Women Wednesday FSU”, an RSO dedicated to providing resources and speakers to women across campus, partnered with IT Leadership students Sydni Musum, Jennifer Sterling, Kylie Cruz, and Brooke Foster to host “Pub Subs in the Hub”. The event, held in the Innovation Hub, brought together 12 female-focused student groups to connect and share ideas on how to better address challenges and promote the success of women and women’s groups at FSU.
Florida State University is home to over 30 female-focused student groups focused on connecting women, hosting speakers, growing networks, and providing discipline specific events. While these groups often have very similar goals and activities, they usually work in silos and are unaware of other similar groups or and their activities. “Pub Subs in the Hub” was created in order to give women the opportunity to connect over a meal while sharing their vision, goals, and ideas.
President of Women Wednesday FSU Simone Elbert shared, “While working on this event with the leadership class, we wanted students to not only be aware of other clubs on campus, but to feel supported within the community at FSU and Tallahassee. I believe we were successful at that, as women were made aware of organizations and were able to get in contact with them during the mixer following the event.”
At the event, each group was able to share their mission, goals and activities. Then the attendees split into smaller focus groups to discuss challenges and collaborate to think of possible solutions and ways to improve their organizations and their members’ experiences. Attendees also rotated between these small groups in order to maximize connections and discussions. Each group was then able to share their ideas with the event attendees as a whole. The top takeaways from these discussions were:
- Host more combined events with other female-focused organizations in order to collaborate on shared topics and challenges
- Help members create an alumni network through guest speakers, LinkedIn, etc. so they feel prepared and well connected for post-graduation life
- Open a line of communication (whether through Facebook, GroupMe, etc.) between different groups so that they can communicate their information and events more effectively and plan for future events
- More strategically use social media and creative marketing to promote the groups’ activities and events to increase membership and amplify the voices of each group
“It was empowering to see a large group of women be so eager to collaborate on generating ideas to improve club involvement around campus,” said attendee and STARS Vice President Maggie Martin-McKinnie, “The future is bright for women at FSU, with clubs like Women Wednesdays FSU is paving the path for students to achieve their full potential.”
Attendees left the event excited about the progress made and plan to host a similar event in the spring semester. To learn more and get involved visit these links:
Connecting Girls to STEM (CGS)
Women in IT/ICT Sharing Experiences (WISE)
Students & Technology in Academia, Research & Service (STARS)