Training Session 1: Introduction to the Program & Logistics

Women’s Initiative

Training Manual

Last Updated 12/8/08

AS INTERPRETED BY THE UWWI
Table of Contents

Training Session 1: Introduction to the Program & Logistics

Outline

Directors

Presenters

Preparing Your Receipts

etc

Materials Check Out

How to check out materials and activity kits (if you are using them).

Sample Presentations, Activities, Handouts

Sample Presentations:

Go to our website for two sample presentations by our directors in IAP 2007.

Sample Activities:

In the appendix hosted at our website.

Sample Handouts:

At the end of each presentation, give the girls handouts, including the following information:

Presenter information (name, major, grad/undergrad, email)
List of national AND local (varies between states) programs for engineering, with websites listed
MIT Women’s Technology Program:
CalTech Young Engineering and Science Scholar Program:
Research Science Institute:
MIT Minority Introduction to Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Science:
FIRST Robotics:
List of local colleges with engineering programs
Any other important take home messages (types of engineering disciplines, classes to take, etc)

How to make the presentation

How to give an effective talk to pre-college women

Make it fun!
Speak clearly.
Use large fonts.
Use a fun font!
Use lots of pictures!
Use examples and pictures of things that are relevant to their lives! (ie. Cell phones, iPods, etc)
Don’t try to cram too much into the talk.
Use props.
Use color.
Make the presentation hands-on and interactive. Get students to speak up during the presentation and ask questions. Give interesting anecdotes and try to bring props or pictures from your projects.
Reward students who participate with sponsor giveaways and/or small candies.

Remember…We are not recruiting for our school. When students ask, “what if my GPA isn’t perfect?” or“what SAT score do I need to get into college?” - Answer with the mindset that there are lots of universities.

In addition to an overview of the engineering field, it is sometimes helpful to focus on one specific issue as an example. For example, students will remember the conversation better if you explore how a fire hydrant works rather than generally describe engineers as problem-solvers. Usually personal experiences are most effective and interesting.

Talk about projects that you think are cool and try to think of a simple way to explain the principles and motivation behind the project. Give examples of skills that someone working on the project needs and where you might learn those skills.

Basic Statistics to Include

Less than 20% of undergrads in engineering are women.
At MIT, the engineering school is 33% female.
Even less, 17% continue on to graduate school.
Women constitute about 11% of the engineering workforce.

Sections to include in your talk

What do engineers do?

For example:

Engineers apply the theories and principles of science and mathematics to the economical solution of practical technical problems. Often their work is the link between a scientific discovery and its application. In addition to design and development, many engineers work in testing, production or maintenance. They supervise production in factories, determine the causes of breakdowns, and test manufactured products to maintain quality. They also estimate the time and cost to complete projects. Some work in management or sales where an engineering background enables them to discuss technical aspects of a product and assist in planning its installation or use. (

"Engineering is the invisible profession… It's not in the media; it's not in the K-12 curriculum.” Well over half of the U.S. public, including almost three-quarters of women, don't know what engineers are, what engineers do, or how engineers make an impact in the real world, unlike doctors, lawyers, dentists, and veterinarians.

Engineering accomplishments are largely invisible and often taken for granted. Members of the public don't know how they get clean water, what it takes to run the Internet, or the engineering wizardry behind the automobile. People grumble about flight delays without appreciating the meteorological, communications, and navigation systems that protect them and enable them to travel safely.

Stereotypes

Include pictures of yourself and your friends and have the students guess who is an engineer and who is not.

Types of engineers

Engineers can be classified into 11 types, according to the kind of work they do—construction, consulting, design, development, teaching, planning (also called applications engineers), production, research, sales, service, and test engineers.

They work in laboratories, industrial plants, or construction sites where they inspect, supervise or solve on-site problems; others work in an office most of the time, and a few travel extensively to plants or construction sites. Engineers in branches such as civil engineering may work outdoors part of the time.

Engineers in each branch have knowledge and training that can be applied to many fields, and because there are numerous separate problems to solve in a large engineering project, engineers in one field often work closely with specialists in scientific, other engineering, and business occupations.

Most specialized engineering we know today developed during the last 200 years. Before then, engineering dealt mostly with the construction of roads, bridges, canals, or military structures and devices. As mankind gained more knowledge of science and technology, engineers began to specialize in certain kinds of work.

Specialized engineering fields are numerous and include aerospace • agricultural • architectural • automotive • biomedical • ceramic • chemical • civil • computer science • electrical • engineering physics • environmental health and sanitary • geological • marine • mechanical • metallurgical and materials • mining • nuclear • ocean • petroleum • systems • textile • and transportation.

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Should I become an engineer?

Do you have…

Curiosity: searching for the "how" and "why" of natural and mechanical things.

Imagination: Picturing situations and suggesting new ideas or ways of approaching problems that arise.

Creativity: Bringing new facts and methods together to solve problems.

Responsibility: Completing assignments in a dependable way with a minimum of supervision.

Communication: Sharing ideas with customers and getting along with people.

Perseverance: Trying again and again to get something right.

Motivation: Taking risks and challenging accepted principles.

The benefits of engineering

Challenging jobs:

An engineer is a person who solves problems, which means that engineers work on all sorts of project in all sorts of jobs. Engineers can work in: Sales, Production, Research, Design, Product Management, Consulting, and more.
Engineers solve problems that are complex and can affect the lives and fortunes of many others. They use all their knowledge of math, science, technology, and people to develop options and implement solutions.
Characteristics of an engineering job:
Applying scientific knowledge to create new and better things and ways of doing.
Developing elegant solutions with limited time, resources, and technology.
Accomplishing a specific task within a given set of constraints.

Good pay and benefits:

There are more high paying jobs for engineering graduates than any other Bachelor's degree.
Employment of engineers will grow 50% nationwide and 100% statewide by year 2005.
Women now make up at least half of medical and law school classes. While entry-level doctors and lawyers earn more than the average first-year engineer does, they also typically endure workdays that are far more grueling.
Other professionals, such as veterinarians and architects, earn less at entry level than engineers do.

Lasting and tangible products:

Engineering can be rewarding because you are encouraged to be creative in designing a new product, building machines, optimizing the operation of a company, or testing computer software. An engineering education together with your innate creative ability can create or design things that never existed. Engineering is associated with other creative fields, particularly the fine arts. The originators of engineering were craft people, such as flint knappers, whose understanding of different types of materials and its intrinsic properties allowed them to refine nature and create weapons and tools.

Help to humankind:

Engineering is a rewarding career option that will make you feel a sense of personal worth from their contribution to a healthier, safer and more enjoyable life for your fellow citizens. In ten years, with an engineering education you might be designing a spacecraft to explore the Milky Way, building nuclear engines to power cities, saving lives through new laser applications or applying computer technology to solving problems in the 21st century.
Engineers combine creativity with technology to "build the quality of life". Without engineers, we would still be riding horses to work and school; we would read by candlelight; we would be missing the cool “toys” we have today. It is difficult to think of anything that we use that has not been influenced in some way by an engineer.

Practical skills for other career paths:

Besides preparing you for a job, an engineering degree gives you a good background for several types of further education. Having a bachelor's degree in certain types of engineering can give you a technical background that can help you continue your education at LawSchool, MedicalSchool, BusinessSchool, or Graduate school in another technical major.
Engineers, because of their practical knowledge and training, have an excellent understanding of how things work and why they are the way that they are. Thus, they are able to understand and contribute knowledgeably to discussions on many of the vital issues that will occupy political debate in coming years.

Engineering Design Process (hands-on activity)

Engineers can work on specific steps or might even have to do all of these things for a project or task.

Identify the problem: What do people need or want?
Create criteria: Criteria are guidelines or specifications that you decide on before you design something. Criteria are generally written as: "the ____, the better". For example, some common criteria might be "the simpler, the better", or "the cheaper, the better".
Design your product: This is the main step. What will your product look like? How will it work?
Optimization: Optimization is an engineering term that just means improving your design so that it better meets your criteria. Engineers have to watch out for something called sub-optimization. This means improving one factor, but making the entire design worse.
Build a prototype: A prototype is a model of your design. This lets the customers know exactly what they're getting. Engineers also often draw blueprints of their design for the same reason.

g.How do I prepare to be an engineer?

High School background:

The beauty is that you go to college for four years and learn how best to approach such problems - you're not expected to know it all before you go. Explain how your first year subjects gave you foundations in math, physics, chemistry, and biology so that even if you did not have a good background before, you can acquire it in college. Getting good grades is important, however colleges also look at how much you challenged yourself. Even if your GPA isn’t great, you can really impress colleges by taking challenging classes, doing extracurricular activities, and attending summer internship and camps.

Classes:

Mathematics up to Trigonometry and Pre-Calculus, and Calculus is strongly recommended
A year of biology, physics, and chemistry
A foreign language
Four years of English
Two years of history and/or social sciences

Extracurricular Activities:

What makes an application memorable to colleges is you – academics come first, but your activities also reveal a great deal. Colleges want to know:

What your non-academic interests are.
Whether you can manage your time and priorities.
Whether you can maintain a long-term commitment.
What diversity you'd bring to the student body.
How you've made a meaningful contribution to something.

Look for opportunities to shine in school activities, after-school jobs, and community service.

Standardized Testing:

Most schools now require at least one standardized test. Take tests early in case you want to retake them. If you have the opportunity, take advanced placement tests to possibly save some time and money when you get to college. Check out for information about SATs, Advanced Placement tests and for information about the ACT.

Summer Programs:

Summer programs are a great opportunity to explore interesting topics and get a little taste of college life. Check out schools in your area for programs or venture to another part of the country. See list below (we’ll post these on the website so that you can just direct students to the website if they want more info).

h.Websites

Engineering Fields:

- description of various fields of engineering
- description of various fields of engineering
and – description of various fields + actually engineering job descriptions

Pictures and profile of women engineers:

- pictures of engineers at Motorola (please e-mail webmaster for permission to use images)
- profiles of women engineers (including Missy Cummings professor of aero-astro at MIT)
Nerd Girls is a group of women engineers who built a solar car and did a documentary of the process to encourage other girls to go into engineering. There official website is here: , and this is a video clip of them talking about engineering: .

Engineering Activities:

– An interesting activity about engineering in chocolates. Yum ^^
- A SWE page with engineering activities. The slime and balloon rocket one looks rather promising
- The motor boat project is possible.

- More activities

Summer Programs:

MIT Women’s Technology Program (WTP):
BostonUniversity's Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS):
Caltech Young Engineering and Science Scholar Program (YESS):
Camp Entrepeneur :
Camp $tart-Up :
CornellUniversity's SummerCollege for High School Students:
Davidson's College's July Experience:
DukeUniversity: Talent Identification Program:
JohnHopkinsUniversity: Pre-College Program:
Mathematics & Science for Minority Students at Phillips Academy (MS)2:
MIT Minority Introduction to Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Science:
MIT Educational Outreach Programs:
Research Science Institute at MIT (RSI):
Morehouse College Upward Bound Math/Science Southeast Regional Institute:
NASA Sharp Plus:
Phillips Academy Summer Session:
Quest Scholars Program at Stanford University:
Smith College Summer Science Program
Syracuse University Summer College for High School Students:
Tuskegee University Computer Science Summer Program:
University of Wisconsin's Engineering Summer Program:

Additional Resources:

Campdepot.com
Camp Channel:
National Association of Precollege Directors:
New England Board of Higher Education: Opportunities for Minority Students:
Peterson's Guide to Summer Opportunities:
Summer Adventure: Directory of Opportunities for Minority Pre-College Students:

Program Spotlight:

The MIT Women's Technology Program is a 4-week summer school for high school girls entering their senior year. Students live at MIT and explore modern electrical engineering and computer science or mechanical engineering through exciting hands-on projects and teamwork.