When classes ended in May and much of campus quieted down for the summer, the work of building a WIE community continues.
Throughout the summer of 2026, Women in Engineering students, staff, faculty, and alumni remained connected through professional development, research, outreach, and programs for incoming students. Some members of the WIE community traveled beyond Illinois to share their work with engineering educators across the country. Others stayed on campus to introduce younger students to engineering, help new students prepare for college, and strengthen connections between current students and alumni.
By August, those summer activities came together as WIE welcomed a new group of students to campus for Orientation and prepared for another academic year.
One of the summer's early opportunities focused on a connection that extended across generations of Grainger engineers.
In June, Grainger Engineering alumna Charmaine Sullivan returned to campus to meet with WIE Communication Interns and students in the Grainger Engineering James Scholar Program. Sullivan is a former James Scholar and Knight of St. Patrick and is the founder of WIN ovation Works. Her visit gave current students an opportunity to hear directly from an alumna whose experiences at Illinois developed into a career in engineering and leadership. Students were able to learn about her professional path while discussing their own interests and experiences at Grainger Engineering.
During the discussion session with communication interns, Sullivan introduced interns to qualitative customer research and discussed how interviews can be used to better understand different audiences. Interns practiced developing questions for alumnae, faculty members, and students, considering how the wording and focus of a question can affect the information an interview produces.
Moreover, the discussion also explored consumer research frameworks, women's life stages, how changing needs can influence behavior and decision making over time. Sullivan shared the origins of a skin care life stage transition model as an example of how observations from customer research can be organized into a framework for understanding consumers. For students involved in communication and outreach, the session offered practical strategies for conducting stronger interviews while showing how audience research can inform work in engineering, business, and other professional settings.
The visit reflected a relationship WIE works to maintain beyond a student's years on campus overall. Alumni can bring professional knowledge back to current students and provide perspectives on life after graduation while continuing to stay connected to the university community that helped begin their careers.
While students were making connections with alumni on campus, members of the WIE community were also sharing their work with engineering educators from around the country.
WIE was represented at the 2026 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, where Program Assistant Madison Fanning attended with her advisor, Professor Caroline Cvetkovic. Fanning and Cvetkovic presented work examining innovation in a neural engineering laboratory course. In addition, Ph.D. student Yaning Cao also shared research based on the WIE x ECS GIANT project. Her work examined engineering internships and how those experiences contribute to students' career development.
For students and researchers involved in engineering education, conferences such as ASEE provide an opportunity to move a project beyond the classroom or research group and place it in conversation with work happening at other universities. The conference allowed Illinois participants to share what they had learned while hearing how educators elsewhere are approaching questions about engineering education and student development.
That focus on learning continued back in U of I, although the students entering Grainger classrooms during the summer were younger than the university's usual crowd.
Rising ninth through twelfth grade students came to campus for the Exploring Your Options camp, a summer program coordinated by Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering (WYSE). The program introduced participants to the wide range of engineering fields they could pursue while giving them an opportunity to experience a college environment firsthand. During the camp, students participated in lessons and hands on activities developed by Grainger Engineering departments. They were able to explore engineering concepts in university spaces while interacting with Illinois students and faculty.
For a high school student considering engineering, choosing a field can be difficult when many disciplines are still unfamiliar. A student may know that they enjoy science, mathematics, design, or problem solving without yet knowing how those interests connect to specific engineering majors. Hence, programs like Exploring Your Options give students a chance to see what different areas of engineering actually involve before they begin making decisions about college and their future studies.
As some students were discovering engineering for the first time, another group was preparing to begin their own Grainger Engineering experience.
New Student Registration continued throughout the summer as incoming first year students selected courses and prepared for their first semester at Illinois.
Madison Fanning, a senior pursuing dual degree in bioengineering and chemistry, spent the summer working as a New Student Registration Coordinator for Grainger Engineering. Having previously worked as a Registration Assistant, she stepped into a position with additional responsibility this summer. Her work included supporting both online and in person registration, answering questions from incoming students, supervising student staff, and helping resolve registration issues. The role placed her on the other side of an experience every Illinois student goes through when first arriving at the university.
Registration is one of the earliest interactions new students have with the academic side of college. For incoming students who are still learning how courses, requirements, and university systems work, having experienced students available to guide them can make that transition easier.
Throughout the summer, those registration conversations were part of a larger period of preparation taking place across Grainger Engineering. Incoming students were building schedules and learning about campus, while staff and student leaders were preparing programs that would help welcome them once they arrived.
That preparation became visible in August with WIE Orientation.
Hundreds of students gathered as WIE welcomed incoming engineers to campus and introduced them to the community they would be a part of during their time at Illinois. Through conversations, activities, and resource-sharing, students met peers, learned where to find support, and began building connections before classes officially started. For students entering a large university, those early connections can be especially meaningful. Orientation helped them recognize familiar faces before their first classes and introduced them to people and programs they could turn to throughout their engineering education.
The event marked the culmination of a summer spent preparing for the fall.
Although campus was quieter during the summer, WIE remained active through workshops, research, conversations, registration sessions, and other experiences that carried into the academic year. By the time students returned to classrooms in August, much of the work of welcoming and supporting them had already been underway for months.
Summer at WIE may look different from the academic year, but the community does not disappear when classes end. Instead, the season creates a different kind of space for learning, connection, and preparation before another year begins.