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Report of the Outreach Initiative

This report highlights the mission, activities, and achievements of the Outreach Initiative, which aims to address the needs of underrepresented demographics in the IT community and promote diversity through events, mentorship programs, and recognition of senior members. The report also showcases the success of the Mentor/Mentee Network in connecting junior and senior members for guidance and support.

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Report of the Outreach Initiative

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  1. Report of the Outreach Initiative Muriel Medard

  2. Main highlights • Mission: to provide events and services that address needs and encourage participation of our underrepresented demographics, while being of interest and use to the community at large • Members of committee: • Todd Coleman UIUC • Christina Fragouli EPFL • Robert Gray Stanford • Sid Jaggi CUHK • Muriel Medard (Chair) MIT • Main current activites: • Events at ISIT and Allerton • WithITS website to serve as focus for our women members • Active plans for recognition of our under-represented senior members • Formal mentor/mentee network

  3. Events • ISIT 2008 • Allerton 2008 (jointly with our student committee) • Planned for ISIT 2009 – an event centered on the experience of women in industrial careers, led by Christine Pepin of DoCoMo (thanks to the ISIT 2009 organizers for their enthusiastic cooperation)

  4. WithITS website • The purpose of our effort is to increase the visibility of our women members within the society, to publicize our activities and to serve as a platform for connecting members and building community • We have an associated mailing list

  5. Promotion of our senior members • Our data shows a lower fraction of female Fellows than SP and a proportion of senior members below that of our sister societies • As a Society, we have started identifying candidates for IEEE Fellow nomination, encouraging these to obtain SM status if they have not done so already (effort by Effros, Goldsmith, Medard, Mitra)

  6. Members |Events |Links Mentor/mentee network • Mentoring of junior members in academia and industry • Our recent Allerton event identified the need for and the frequent difficulty of securing good internal and external mentoring • We propose to establish a formal mentor/mentee network: • Formal mentor/mentee relationship of 3 years • E-mail contact a few times a year for checking in an providing advice (e.g. going over CAREER proposal, providing introductions to potential collaborators) • A yearly mentor/mentee event at ISIT after the program has been established • We are restricting the mentees to being Society members • Coordinate the matching and shepherd the process • Requests are done according to general interests

  7. Mentor/Mentee network • Current Matches • Muriel Medard and Aditya Ramamoorthy • Joerg Widmer and Shizheng Li • Alon Orlitsky and Tracey Ho • P.R. Kumar and Chee Wei Tan • Muriel Medard and Aylin Yener • Michelle Effros and Steven Weber • Our folder on the IT Web Site has a collection of materials on mentoring • We have already recruited 15 mentors in academia and industry (Qualcomm, Lucent/Alcatel, Docomo) • Our requirement for membership for mentees has already led to some new members

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