The SWE Detroit Regional Section was founded in 1952 and is one of SWE’s oldest sections. It is also one of the largest with over 500 members. This professional SWE section awards three section selected, endowed scholarship: SWE Detroit Past Presidents Scholarship, Detroit SWE 4 Life Scholarship, and Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship.
SWE Detroit Past Presidents Scholarship
The SWE Detroit Past Presidents Scholarships was funded by the section’s past presidents and with available section funds left over from hosting the 2002 SWE National Conference. The section presidents who contributed came from throughout our 60+ section’s history. Scholarship funds were raised over four years and in time for the section’s 65th anniversary!
Detroit SWE 4 Life Scholarship
The Detroit SWE 4 Life Scholarship was primarily funded by the section’s SWE Life Members along with available section funds from hosting the 2002 SWE National Conference. Scholarship funds were raised over four years and in time for the section’s 70th anniversary! This scholarship is available to freshmen living or planning to study engineering in Michigan.
Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship
Josie E. Rewald [1963 – 2016]
Josie E. Rewald, a SWE Life member, passed away unexpectedly in September 2016. Everyone who knew Josie was saddened by the passing of a wonderful leader and mentor in the SWE Detroit professional section and General Motors (GM). Josie was committed to excellence, and her record of accomplishment during her career was stellar. She was very interested in mentoring students and early career engineers, in particular women. She served as a mentor to many at GM and SWE Detroit, as well as those in and outside of her community.
The endowment of this scholarship in 2018 was spearheaded by Josie’s husband, Patrick Hillberg. Patrick wanted to create new avenues for future generations of women similar to his wife. When Josie graduated in 1981, she was the top-performing student of a poor-performing high school near Detroit. As valedictorian, she received a full-ride scholarship to Cornell, and their endowment deserves credit for taking that risk. Even though Josie did not perform particularly well in her engineering classes, she had excellent interpersonal skills. By the end of her career at GM, Josie had eighteen PhD-educated Finite Element Analysts reporting to her!
The Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship is open to community college students studying any major in Michigan. With too much attention paid to four year degrees and not enough to middle skills, this scholarship was create to spark additional education paths for future women engineers.
Reference – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/josie-rewald-memorial-community-college-scholarship-through-hillberg
