My Story
Throughout all of my life, I have always been very interested in science and math. However, if you would’ve asked me what I wanted to be when I was younger, the answer would be “I don’t know.” I’ve always considered the field of engineering, but I ended up straying away because I listened to the stereotype that the STEM field is meant for boys. Although in the middle of sophomore year, I finally came to the realization that girls, too, can be engineers. This moment was in class when we had to do a project about what we wanted to be in the future, and of course, I didn’t know what to do. I turned to my friend in the class, and I asked her what she wanted to be. She said, “I want to be an aerospace engineer.” She described what an aerospace engineer does, and as a friend I look up to, she inspired me to become an aerospace engineer as well. From then on, I began my journey in discovering my new passion for engineering. At a local company, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., I participated in an engineering explore post. I was the only girl in the program, but after my new confidence in engineering, I continued on. It is important to me to give younger girls the opportunity I did not have myself. I want to spread the message early on that girls can be engineers too.
My Project
To accomplish my goals of empowering young girls and teaching engineering, I plan to establish an EngineerGirl club for the middle school girls that will later attend my high school. Starting out with the club, we will conduct smaller challenges that only last for the duration of the meeting called “Mini Buildups.” The purpose of these shorter challenges is to introduce new engineering topics to the girls. At the start of each meeting, I will introduce the challenge and direct the girls what to do. Throughout the course of the meeting, help and encouragement will be offered to the girls as they progress through the challenge. At the end of the meeting, we will go over what was learned from the mini-project and make a connection to how it relates to engineering.
The Mini Buildups serve as a foundation of knowledge that the girls will be able to use later on in the club. Additionally, the shorter challenges allow the girls to be creative and develop collaboration skills by creating an environment that enables the girls to build off of each other and work together to solve problems, which are life skills that can be applied anywhere. As we do more and more Mini Buildups and the girls become more comfortable with engineering, we will then transition into longer challenges that will last for a month, and in the future, perhaps we will incorporate year-long challenges. I am calling these longer challenges “Core Projects.” For these challenges, the girls will take what they learned in the Mini Buildups and apply it to the Core Projects. The first Core Projects will be chosen by both me and my sponsor. Although, in the future, we will allow the Core Project to be elected on within the middle schoolers to give them a chance to give their input and ideas to the club. With these Core Projects, we will really take the girls through the engineering process since we have a month to do each one.
Especially with the first challenge, I will walk the girls through the steps: defining the problem to be solved, generating concepts, developing a solution, constructing and testing a prototype, evaluating the solution, and then finally, presenting the solution. In addition, with the Core Projects, we will have community involvement, whether it be solving a problem in the community or bringing in people from the community to talk to the girls in a meeting. My sponsor has connections to people in the community, and I also have a few of my own. I also got accepted to attend the 2020 Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Forum presented by the Da Vinci Science Center on March 18th, and this will give me the opportunity to interact with female professionals from area STEM corporations as well as college students and faculty. I hope to make connections at this event that will help me succeed with my project at the middle school.