On May 30, a seminar entitled “Visiting Mentors - Women Engineers: Career Mentoring with Engineers in Society” was held. The mentoring event was sponsored by the Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers’s (KIChE’s) Women’s Committee with the purpose of encouraging talented female engineers to remain in the engineering field.   Professor Hyunjoo Lee from the KAIST Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering started the event with a brief introduction of the KIChE’s Women’s Committee. The introduction was followed by talks given by three female engineers selected to represent different sectors of society in which they were active.

The first speaker was Professor Myungsook Oh from the Department of Chemical Engineering in Hongik University. Professor Oh spoke about the personal struggles she experienced as a female engineer, despite having earned prestigious engineering degrees and extensive work experience, and investigated possible reasons why female students may be discouraged from pursuing an engineering career. She also spoke of the need of more female figures in academia and encouraged participants to dream of becoming professors.

Second to take the podium was Yeong Rae Chang, an LG Chem research fellow. Chang shared her experiences working as a researcher at LG Chem for the past 25 years, and her impressive accomplishments within the company without ever having pursued a doctorate degree. Listing qualities that help researchers succeed in a large company like LG, Chang emphasized that teamwork and a positive attitude are vital to being part of an organization.

Doctor Kee Young Koo, Senior Researcher at the Korea Institute of Energy Research, gave the final talk, speaking about how she came to dream of becoming a researcher, and her experiences at a government research institute. The three speakers were followed by a question-and-answer session during which the most pressing concerns of most students seemed to be about the hardships of balancing work and family. Participating students then joined a group, each led by a mentor most related to their career interests, to ask questions and seek advice over dinner.