Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

Every year as part of Engineering Week in the US various universities sponsor a Girls Engineering Day. This is an amazing way to introduce the many aspects of engineering to young girls. I have been to the event at the University of Texas for the past two years and it rocks!

Girls get to see presentations involving cool stuff like liquid nitrogen and work on experiments that can go awry. Boys can attend as well, but this is all part of an effort to bring up the numbers of girls involved in the sciences.

The ages range for these events, but at UT girls can attend who are in 1^st through 8^th grade. I think it is crucial that girls are given the exposure to both the science of engineering and the university campus at such a young age. As has been repeatedly studied, many girls lose interest in the sciences in middle school and I think that it is key to expose them to how fun science and college can be at an early age.

The university also has retention programs in place to help women who choose to study engineering stick to their choice and not get overwhelmed when it feels like they are the only women in a class of 200.

I spoke with Tricia Berry, the Director of the Women in Engineering Program at UT and a chemical engineer herself and she told me about the PALS program at UT where a freshman woman is teamed up with another woman in her major who is a sophomore to senior level. Ms. Berry also told me about a networking reception the university held for women in engineering. The women who attended were floored that there were so many women actually in their major. When sitting in a lecture hall of 200 it is difficult to pick out the other 10 or 20 women there and it’s great for their egos to see that they are part of a much larger group.

I like the idea of introducing girls to the idea of engineering and then supporting them when they make the decision to pursue that field as a career. Since engineering is about solving problems it seems to me that the more diverse a workforce that is in place to solve any given problem the better.