Last Friday, IPS participated in the ‘Introduce a girl to engineering’ day at The University of Toledo to bring attention and excitement around the engineering profession in Northwest Ohio. Roughly 750 young women attended from 15 school districts with the help of 14 local engineering companies.
Girls will work with women engineers from local companies and engineering students on a variety of hands-on activities to better understand water treatment, transportation network designs, basic coding and programming, structural design principles, mechanics of propulsion, genetic engineering and cyber security.
Studies have found that girls tend to lose confidence in math and science and lose interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in early adolescence, so the event targets girls in middle school and connects them with role models. “By creating programs that show individuals that they are not alone in their interest in science and technology, while also giving them examples of individuals who have succeeded in their own careers in the industry, we believe we can help reinforce that interest in the STEM fields during a stage in their lives that studies have shown it to wane,” said Bryan Bosch, manager of diversity, inclusion and community engagement initiatives in the UToledo College of Engineering.
“Our goal is to create an environment where we can build interest in the field for any young person, while developing programs that can nurture and grow that interest into a career for anyone.”
