Once again Drexel Engineering hosted "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day," a free event for girls in grades 6-12. This year, we welcomed our largest group yet. The 180 girls who registered represented about 70 different schools in the Greater Philadelphia and South Jersey areas. In addition to working with the Girl Scouts of Southeastern PA, a stronger relationship with the Dornsife helped recruit girls specifically from the West Philadelphia area.
Parents and students all attended a keynote presentation which was given by Deborah (Deb) Grubbe at the recommendation of Drexel’s student chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honor Society. Deb served in a corporate director role for Dupont before working for BP and later becoming an entrepreneur. Following the keynote, students were divided in 19 small groups and rotated through three hands on activities which were lead exclusively by Drexel students including representatives from the student chapters of SWE and Tech Serv as well as students who are enrolled in the CIVC101 course for engineering majors. Sessions explained the different disciples of engineering (MEM, AE, EE etc) and then provided students with a hands on activity (mechanical grabber, water filter, lemon battery etc).
For the first time at this event, parents were given the option to learn alongside their children or attend parent focused sessions during the course of the day. The parent focused sessions were lead by MSE, Tau Beta Pi, and Noha Edell, the mother of a freshman engineering student here at Drexel. The graduate student in MSE spoke about how everything is made out of something as a way to explain engineering to an audience who may not have been familiar with the field, the student chapter of Tau Beta Pi emphasized the connection between engineering and teamwork, and Noha spoke about overcoming obstacles and how to encourage the academic pursuits of a child.
Drexel Engineering materials were made available to students and their parents, CoE branded materials were given out, and surveys were collected to better understand participant interest in the STEM fields and improve the event in future years.