Summer camp gives girls a taste of the engineering world

Henry Baumgartner
ASME NEWS

Sixteen middle school girls from Ohio spent part of their summer doing something a little different: They attended a week-long engineering day camp run by the University of Akron. The program, called "Multiplying Your Options," is the brainchild of Donna Hrko, a mechanical engineer and the director of the Women in Engineering Program at Akron.

The camp was designed to develop enthusiasm for math, science and engineering among girls at a crucial age. The week ended with the students racing edible cars they had constructed as part of their activities.

The girls, 13- and 14-year-olds who will be entering eighth or ninth grade in the fall, spent five days learning about different kinds of engineers and engineering. They made roller coasters for marbles out of half-inch foam pipe insulation, which involved dealing with cost, construction, time and teamwork issues, and they visited a chocolate factory, where they met Terry Mustard, a mechanical engineer.

The girls also visited a construction site and made concrete. They went to the nearby NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, where they visited the museum and participated in a special program for middle schoolers.

William Bandy, a member of ASME and president of the Environmental Design Group, talks with middle school students participating in the "Multiplying Your Options" program at the University of Akron about career opportunities in the engineering field.

The students learned about biomedical engineering and built electric motors. They visited the university's Polymer Science and Engineering Building — Akron has a noted program in this field — and the Smart Materials Lab. At the Rubbermaid factory, they were escorted through the testing and R&D departments and then watched as household products were made on the factory floor.

At the offices of the Environmental Design Group, a local consulting firm specializing in infrastructure, development services, environ- mental management, and parks and ecological services, the students got to try out surveying equipment and met with engineers as well as geologists and landscape architects.

According to William Bandy, an ASME member and the EDG president, "We set up a CAD system with a drawing of a parking deck at the university, and they could place cars on the parking grid in CAD."

After what sounds like a very packed week, for the grand finale the girls constructed miniature cars using only edible materials. The ingredients had to cost less than $10 per car and the cars had to roll on their wheels and be less than 8 inches long and 4 inches wide. Engine power was not a requirement; the cars just had to roll down a slope.

"They used a lot of junk food," noted Hrko, adding that the students often found foods they requested were not as structurally suitable as others they could have picked.

Hrko hopes to expand the program to three sessions, including one for younger students and another for older ones.

But the middle school years are considered especially critical. Volumes have been written showing that waiting until girls are juniors or seniors in high school to get them interested in engineering is a mistake, Hrko said. In the middle school years, from sixth to ninth grade, girls stop considering engineering seriously as a possible field of interest, she added.

"This is the age at which it becomes important for kids to fit in with their peers, and studies have shown many girls with aptitude for science and math become self-conscious of these abilities," Hrko said.

And it is necessary to start taking the required math and science courses as early as eighth or ninth grade in order to be prepared for a college engineering curriculum.

Bandy strongly concurs about exposing girls to engineering in middle school. In fact, Bandy, a mechanical engineer who has been active in ASME for decades and served as a judge for the edible car contest, also wants to see the program offered to girls at an even younger age, perhaps those just entering middle school.

As a way to keep the camp's alumnae interested, Hrko polled participants to gauge interest in an "e-mentor" program, where each would be assigned a female college engineering student who would give advice and encouragement. Fifteen of the 16 participants said, "Yes." Hrko plans to follow up with each one.

"I get fired up thinking how exciting my work in engineering is," Hrko said. And she wants to show her charges the things that can be done with an engineering career. "I want them to see engineering can be anything you want it to be."

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