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Third-year Engineering students host STEM showcase for middle, high school women

Hajeela, Wusk say feedback is positive, hope to make event annual affair

<p>Wusk and Hajela reached out to local middle and high schools, Girl Scout troops, their home high schools and Tech Girls, a local volunteer group dedicated to promoting science to girls.</p>

Wusk and Hajela reached out to local middle and high schools, Girl Scout troops, their home high schools and Tech Girls, a local volunteer group dedicated to promoting science to girls.

Third-year Engineering students Grace Wusk and Trisha Hajela hosted over 50 middle and high school girls at an event entitled “Ladies in the Lab” Sunday. The event showcased female engineering students and encouraged middle and high school-aged women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

Wusk and Hajela developed the idea for the showcase as part of their “Network Building for Entrepreneurs” class. They were assigned to create ventures and reach out to five people a week. Hajela said after discovering neither was interested in their own venture, she and Wusk decided to collaborate.

“We got to chatting and we both really liked doing STEM outreach… for young girls, and we were really passionate about getting more females into the engineering field,” Wusk said. “We just joined together, and the idea evolved.”

In planning the event, Hajela and Wusk wanted to create a collaboration among multiple student and corporate engineering groups. By bringing numerous outreach efforts into one event, attendees could explore different facets of engineering.

“A lot of individual groups do a lot of outreach, but there’s no collective effort to do outreach for young girls around the community,” Hajela said. “We thought it would be fun to do something related to calling a lot of female engineering groups to do fun activities in a more collective fashion.”

To find attendees, Hajela and Wusk reached out to local middle and high schools, Girl Scout troops, their home high schools and Tech Girls, a local volunteer group dedicated to promoting science to girls.

“One day we just sat down for an hour and a half and went through the public directory of Albemarle County Public Schools, and we just sent out a blurb to every math and science teacher we could find and asked if they could share the opportunity with their female students,” Hajela said. “A lot of the teachers were really excited about it.”







Source: ASEE Engineering By the Numbers, 2011

To showcase the hands-on nature of engineering, Hajela and Wusk reached out to student and corporate groups to create exhibits, which ranged from Trigon Engineering Society’s Giant Jenga, the Biomedical Engineering Society’s DNA extraction and NASA’s glove box and 3D printer.

The opening ceremony of the event featured remarks from Kathryn Thornton, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Wusk said Thornton was a top choice to speak because of her background as an astronaut and her background in engineering.

“We just knew she would have really cool things to say being one of the few women to be in space,” Wusk said.

Thornton said she spoke at the event to welcome the girls and support Hajela and Wusk’s efforts. She told attendees to pursue the science field so they can prepare themselves for the changing landscape of the STEM field.

“There are technologies and career paths that will be invented sometime during their lifetimes that do not exist right now,” Thornton said. “I just encouraged them to collect all the knowledge tools that they could get now so that they have the ability to navigate the changing world that they’re going to see in their lifetime.”

A major facet of the showcase was the mentorships between female engineering student volunteers and the attendees. University women were paired with the attendees to provide answers to their questions and an outlook on what it is like to be a woman in the engineering field.

“It seems like all the girls were really engaged, and I think the mentorship really was a good way to break the ice for them,” Wusk said. “We really wanted to show the girls that this could be you in a couple years and to keep that door open.”

After the event, Hajela and Wusk sent out surveys to attendees to gauge its success. Wusk said that so far the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“We’ve gotten a bunch of feedback from parents and exhibitors, like, ‘I really hope you do this again,’” Wusk said. “I think the feedback has been that the mentorship was very valuable.”

Due to the positive responses, Hajela and Wusk have begun to consider replicating the event next year.

“I think we would like to [run the event next year], and maybe hopefully train some younger girls to run it in the future so it can be a more sustainable thing,” Wusk said.

Hajela, Wusk and Thornton all agreed the event was important for encouraging girls, especially in middle and high school, to stick with STEM education because they are at a formative time in their lives.

“It seems to be the age when a lot of young people make decisions about the path they’re going to take,” Thornton said. “The young ladies are just as capable in math and science as the guys, but sometimes they get turned off by a variety of other insolences, so I think it’s nice for them to come here and to see the Engineering students we have and how well they are doing.”

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