INDIANAPOLIS (Feb. 24, 2015) – To kick off Engineers Week, and in advance of Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day on Thursday, Feb. 26, over 50 middle school girls from Fall Creek Valley Middle School in Indianapolis joined with 20 female professional engineers, scientists, forensic pathologists, and computer scientists to explore STEM careers on Monday evening during a Girls In STEM event.
The event, hosted at Project Lead The Way’s Indianapolis office, began with a welcome by Valerie Osinski, PLTW senior vice president and chief technology officer, followed by a brief keynote by Janette Allen, manager of requirements analysis and engineering at Roche Diagnostics. Next, the Girls In STEM guests got a sneak peek of PLTW’s 2015 GoGirl! video before jumping into interactive roundtable discussions and a hands-on activity.
PLTW’s 2015 GoGirl! video premieres Thursday. Watch last year’s video on PLTW’s YouTube channel.
In the hands-on activity breakout session, students were challenged to come up with solutions for a hypothetical patient with bone cancer who lost his hand. Using only available materials – including wooden dowel rods, tape, pipe cleaners, craft wire, scissors – the students developed solutions to help the patient regain function through a device that could lift a Styrofoam cup.
After completing the prosthetic activity, students also had the opportunity to take robots for a test drive.
During the roundtable discussion portion of the evening, specialists in a wide variety of STEM professions – material engineer, coroner, electrical engineer, data scientist, project manager, developer, and more – spoke about their work and academic experiences and answered student questions.
To bring the evening to a close, students shared with the whole group their prosthetic design solutions and career aspirations, with several noting how their passions were reaffirmed while others noted that they were newly inspired to pursue STEM.
Girls In STEM Event Professional Participants
| Name | Organization | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Ondrea McAulay | Progression Partners | Principal and Sr. Partner |
| Allison Babcock | MTD Products | Mechanical Engineer |
| Cassandra Marino | Natare Corporation | CAD Design Engineer |
| Janette Allen | Roche Diabetes Care R&D | Manager Requirements Analysis and Engineering |
| Lindsay Siovaila | Girl Develop It / Salesforce | Senior Solutions Developer |
| Virginie Adams | Girl Develop It / Salesforce | Project Manager |
| Kayleigh Cowles | INDOT-Seymour District | Traffic Coordination Engineer |
| Alfie Ballew | Marion County Coroner | Chief Deputy Coroner |
| Christin Schippnick | Roche Diagnostics | R&D Project Manager |
| Barb Wimmer | Marian University | Nursing Student |
| Jamie Hubbard | Girl Scouts | Program Development Manager |
| Camille Warren | Great Lakes Equity | Assistant Director of Research and Evaluation |
| Cathy Stein | Perscio | Sr. Data Scientist and Partner Manager |
| Mary McGuire | Remy International Inc. | Senior Continuous Improvement Manager |
| Victoria DiFranco | Rolls-Royce | Electrical Engineering, Co-op Student |
| Alexandra Baucco | Rolls-Royce | Test Engineer, U.S. and Germany |
| Melissa Hughes | Rolls-Royce | Engineer |
| Jessica Durden | Rolls-Royce | Material Engineer |
| Diane Colson | Eli Lilly | Director, Engineering Tech Center |
| Leah Cosgrove | JustCos Engineering | Principal Engineer |
| Carletta Sullivan | McKenzie Center for Innovation & Technology | Community Liaison |
Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day is a national effort held each February to introduce more young women to the exciting careers of engineering and STEM. Women constitute 48 percent of the U.S. workforce but hold just 24 percent of the U.S. jobs in STEM; minority women hold just one out of every 10 STEM jobs.