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| Girls Just Wanna Be Engineers November 2009
"I was the only woman in my doctoral program and was sometimes mistaken for a university employee because there were so few women in the engineering building," explained Julie DelVecchio Savage, a chief engineer at MITRE and the keynote speaker at Young Women in Engineering Day on Nov. 13 at MITRE's Bedford campus. "Other women paved the way for me in this field; we hope today helps you and offers a support network for reaching your goals." The objective of the event is to encourage young women to enter the engineering field. "One of the recommendations for encouraging girls to stick with math and science is to expose them to role models," said Abigail Gertner, a lead artificial intelligence engineer. "Seeing women in engineering jobs gives them the sense that they can do the same. Many MITRE colleagues saw the importance of this outreach and came together to make the first annual event possible." Gertner organized the day with the support of Diversity and Work Life Specialist Jill Braceland and a group of dedicated volunteers as part of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition outreach and MITRE's Corporate Diversity Action Council initiatives. According to the U.S. Department of Education, girls, just like boys, often dream of careers using calculus and chemistry; however, the number of women who enter the math and science fields drops off -- especially in engineering -- as college approaches. The workshop was modeled on a similar event held for the past three years at MITRE McLean and led by Jed Kane, a lead multi-discipline system engineer, and Karen Murray, work life and diversity lead. As part of the day on the Bedford campus, 35 girls – ranging from freshman to seniors -- from area high schools took part in a variety of hands-on activities, including cell phone antenna design experiments, audio hot spotting, and a brainstorming session using the ACME lab's collaborative story development kit. Twins Brittany and Alyssa Kelley, juniors at Pentucket Regional Senior High School in Groveland, Mass., said they both know they want to be engineers, but not what jobs are available to them. Each found the activities helpful in thinking about a career path and appreciated the exposure to the different types of engineering that the day offered. Students also learned how several staff members got their start in engineering at a panel discussion with Gertner, Bryn Dews, a lead human factors engineer; Francine Lalooses, Kallie Nordengren, and Kacey Oreal, all senior software systems engineers; and Laura Ricci, a principal information systems engineer. Questions from the audience ranged from "Were math and science your best subjects?" to "What do you do to keep your job interesting?" The day ended with "15-minute networking" in which staff members sat at a table of students and teachers for 15 minutes and then switched to another table, maximizing the number of people the girls were able to speak with. The students inquired about everything from salaries and travel to the types of projects they work on and how staff chose their engineering specialties. "I want to go into math, but thought I couldn't go very far with it," said Vannary Ann, a sophomore at Notre Dame High School in Lawrence, Mass., after the event. "Now I know I can do a lot with a math major." —by Dawn Stapleton Page last updated: March 10, 2010 | Top of page |
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