The University of Toledo College of Engineering’s award-winning Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day welcomed more than 300 seventh and eighth grade girls from 13 schools to campus on Friday, along with 15 companies.
The Introduce a Girl to Engineering Program Series provides middle school-aged girls a greater understanding of STEM-career fields through interactive programming and presentations by women in the field of engineering throughout spring semester.
The girls worked 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 STEM fields in early adolescence. The program has been built to show girls in this age group what the career path for women in engineering can look like, and to encourage them to make a career out of their interest in science, technology and math.
UToledo’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day has twice won the National Women in Engineering Action Committee’s Girls Day Event of the Year award.
Approximately 500 students from 18 schools and 21 companies and organizations will participate in the Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day scheduled Friday, March 22.
Throughout the seven years of this program in action, more than 5,000 girls have taken part in this series from 32 school districts across Northern Ohio, along with more than 30 companies, 10 student organizations and individuals from multiple professional leadership groups throughout Toledo and northwest Ohio area.
