By Erin Wong

There’s more to the UW’s national Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers than just Hispanic engineering students. Co-president Valerie Najera wants to make it clear that anyone can be part of the club.

The group is open to students in any science, technology, engineering or math field.

Najera joined the club during her sophomore year at UW. “The speakers told us about their stories, told us about how they overcame their problems and it motivated me to continue in the STEM field,” Najera said .

The Hispanic community within the STEM field is very small. The club hopes to reach out to more underrepresented students. Everyone has a different definition of underrepresented, Najera said, but if a student feels like he or she is underrepresented, then the student is more than welcome to join SHPE.

“Because we are so small as a Hispanic community, we want to share this great opportunity that SHPE is, and share it with anybody that we can,” Najera said .

The organization’s outreach to new members includes setting up information tables on the UW campus to educate more students, as well as hosting an annual conference for high school students to learn more about SHPE. While about half of the members are Hispanic, other ethnicities and races are represented, including Caucasian and Asian.

With 29,468 undergraduates enrolled at the University of Washington Seattle campus, fewer than 2,000 Latino students total attended the school in Fall 2013, according to a UW report.

About 2 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. work in the science and technology fields, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center Survey. The overarching goal for both the UW and professional SHPE chapters is growth.

Faraón Torres-Lazos, president of the SHPE Puget Sound chapter and a Boeing aerospace engineer, stresses the need to get more Hispanic students in the science and technology fields, to help bridge the gap. The UW chapter works with the Puget Sound chapter to bring in speakers and help their members make personal connections.

A lot of these professionals were in SHPE as undergraduates and want to be able to give back to the club. These members represent a number of companies in the Seattle area, including Boeing, Amazon and several start-ups. In recent years, the collegiate members have noticed that more professionals are reaching out, wanting to help.

“It makes it easier so that when we are applying, we aren’t just names on paper,” Najera said.

The SHPE Puget Sound serves engineers, scientists and other professionals in Washington’s Puget Sound area. SHPE provides resources for their collegiate members, including scholarships, mentorship, professional development help, conferences and career fairs.

Torres-Lazos was a SHPE member at the University of Texas Pan-American chapter, and credits SHPE with helping him find his current job.

Wendy Garcia , treasurer of the UW chapter, says SHPE helps keep its members driven to continue in their field. It is hard enough getting students interested in the field, she said. Making them stick with it after the rigorous courses during their first year is even harder.

“Getting to know these professionals makes me think that if they made it through, then I can too,” Garcia said.

The students are currently planning their Future Meets Present Conference, an annual gathering the collegiate members host for high school students.

These students come from high schools in Eastern and Western Washington. SHPE introduces them to UW, gets them familiar with STEM and tries to help them make connections. Some of the high schoolers are interested in STEM, and some of them have never been to a college before.

“We want to give the opportunity to those who don’t know what they want to do after high school, and at the same time give the opportunity to those who have already made up their minds,” Najera said.

The UW students are also planning a 5K run to help raise funds for this conference. They hope to be able to provide transportation for the high school students, especially those coming from Royal High School in Eastern Washington, where their junior chapter has been established, the only junior SHPE chapter in Washington State.

Junior chapters can be established at middle schools and high schools in order to provide younger students with hands-on opportunities in the STEM fields, and to help keep the students on track as they continue with their education.

Abraham Guadarrama, who currently serves as activities coordinator for the UW chapter, attended the Future Meets Present Conference as a sophomore in high school. He felt connected because of the outreach SHPE provided.

He is now a senior at UW, majoring in geography with a focus in Geographical Information Systems and hopes to pursue a master’s degree in Information System Sciences.

“Here at SHPE, we are inclusive to anyone who supports our mission or our values,” Guadarrama said.

For Torres-Lazos, SHPE’s success is due to its members.

“We have people who care. We aspire to be role models in our community,” he said.

SHPE UW recently met with a NASA associate director and toured of the advanced propulsion laboratory , located in the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium at the University of Washington. UW is a part of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, which is dedicated to providing research opportunities to students in aerospace science and technology.

On the collegiate side, they have worked with the National Society of Black Engineers, another registered student organization at UW. They recently partnered with the Engineering Academic Center to provide computers and tutors for the SHPE members to use as resources for finals week.

Working with other organizations helps SHPE provide more success for its members.

“It is easier to find the career that you want to strive for through these professionals that we work with,” said Najera. “That’s what we want to do. We want to help our members these opportunities to make these connections.”