My Story
As an aspiring engineer myself, I’ve engulfed myself into the field of engineering from a young age, through participating in robotics and coding competitions and taking numerous amounts of engineering courses in and out of school. However, as I entered middle school, I began to question my interest in STEM as I was left in a gapingly small minority of girls in my engineering classes. I began to wonder: how much did I actually like engineering? I had always been sure in my love for engineering - but how could I be sure if I had never pursued another interest? However, with my parents’ support, I realized that the passion I had when solving an engineering challenge, the sense of accomplishment I felt when I solved a problem couldn’t be faked; my engineering love was real even if my friends had decided theirs wasn’t. Although I was able to rediscover my passion and interest in STEM, this is not a privilege many girls have, their disinterest leading them to pursue a different path entirely. I hope to be able to support young girls that were like myself once, those who questioned their interest in STEM due to its “unorthodox” nature, to rediscover their interest in STEM and encourage them to pursue this interest going into high school.
My Project
To meet my objectives, I plan to meet with my sponsor and the principal of my old middle school at the end of this year and get approval for my club so that by the start of the 2020-2021 school year, I'll be able to start my EngineerGirl club early in the year in order to incorporate the largest number of activities and challenges possible to engage the girls within the field of engineering. Examples of activities and challenges I hope to get the girls involved in include "Instant Challenges'', during which they would experience a shortened version of the design process and have to work in teams to solve challenges such as building a catapult in 30 minutes with restraints such as a limited amount of supplies. However, I hope to also introduce the iterative design process to the girls, by creating longer projects that span a month’s work, in which they must learn to re-evaluate their solutions when something goes wrong or isn't as effective as it should be. An example of one such project is an animation/game created on the website Scratch.
Beyond this, I hope to introduce and teach the girls STEM subjects they don't have the chance to learn in school such as coding through both my own instruction and the use of the members of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society I helped created and am an officer of at my school. I hope to be able to get my Tau members to have "guest visits" to my EngineerGirl club, during which the girls could have "one-on-one" mentorship with students who have learned these skills in the engineering classes offered in high school. I hope that through the inclusion of not only activities and challenges but learning as well, the girls are not only introduced to the design process and engineering concepts but are able to learn more information in STEM subjects in a fun and inclusive environment. Such lessons, like an introduction to circuits or coding will surpass the knowledge learned in the ordinary classroom and hopefully introduce not just engineering concepts in action, but “engineer knowledge” that when applied, will not only expand the girls’ knowledge, but also give them a leg up when they take other STEM or engineering courses in the future. Through my inclusion of all types of STEM concepts, not just engineering but computer science as well, I hope to expand the boundaries of gender bias that has been set into our society and encourage girls like me to embrace their love of STEM and engineering and go out into the world to pursue this love.