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Expo Taps Girls' Potential
Oct 20, 2005
By JESSICA DURKIN, Norwich Bulletin
NEW LONDON-- Building bridges using
sophisticated software, "baking" concrete brownies and extracting
DNA were all in a morning's work Wednesday for a group of
local schoolgirls.
"I like how it's mostly hands-on stuff," Ledyard
Middle School student Taylor Strelevitz said. Strelevitz attended
the concrete brownies workshop led by Eileen Ego and Tarishia
Martin, engineers with the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
"With science, you are actually moving," the
12-year-old aspiring marine biologist said.
Half-day event
About 140 young, scientifically-minded seventh
graders from area schools attended the Fourth Annual Girls
and Tech Expo at the United States Coast Guard Academy, a
half-day event to reinforce young girls' enthusiasm for math
and science careers.
"They need a strong math and science background,
but also inquiring and inquisitive girls," said Mary Ellen
Banker, a Pfizer research and development biologist who led
the DNA extraction demonstration. "They certainly have the
potential."
The expo specifically targets seventh-grade
girls to keep them thinking about science careers just before
they enter high school, when the majority of girls stop pushing
themselves to excel in science and settle into traditional
career paths.
"Sometimes girls opt out of the heavy lifting
-- the pre-calculus, the calculus, AP course work in science,"
said Capt. Sue Bibeau, director of admissions at the Coast
Guard Academy. "Part of the message here is there are no restrictions
as to what jobs you can do."
The Coast Guard Academy, which has hosted the
event three years, emphasizes engineering and physical sciences
in its curriculum and offers only Bachelor of Science degrees.
Seventy percent of the academy's students major
in some technological field. Women make up about one-third
of the Academy's enrollment, officials said.
Expo guest speaker Jacqueline James, a civil
engineering professor at the academy, said the main message
to attendees was to strive for achievement. James compared
men's and women's progress in music and sports.
"I made the analogy that if men can do it, we
can do it," James said. "If women made all these strides (in
other fields), then definitely we can do it in technology."
James said women are a benefit to science because
they bring an attention to detail and thoroughness to their
work.
"We're more meticulous, and we need to use
that edge," James said.
Women are making inroads in science, as degrees
conferred to females in the physical sciences and science
technologies increased from 14 percent in 1970 to 41 percent
in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National
Center for Educational Statistics.
But professionals in the field acknowledge there
are still more men learning and working in technology than
women.
"When I started, there were no female engineers;
it's still low," said Peggy Caserto, 44 and a mechanical engineering
professor at the academy.
Caserto led the virtual bridge building workshop
where students used computer software to see a strength-of-material
demonstration.
"What needs to be done, girls need to be introduced
to things very early," she said.
ReachJessicaDurkinat425-4217orjdurkin@norwichbulletin.com
-- Source: National Science Foundation, 2004
report: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in
Science and Engineering. Employed bachelor's or higher degree
recipients, by occupation, sex, race/ethnicity, country of
birth, and disability status, 2000.
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