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Unread 12-09-2007, 17:06
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Erin Rapacki Erin Rapacki is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2001
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Re: Why is it that not many girls are into robotics?

I think it’s a combination of the attitudes of the mentors and current students on the team. A team who already has females on it may do better at attracting more, a team with only guys (but guys who encourage females to take a leadership role) may do well at recruiting, but a team with only guys where girls don't even register on their radar as being technically competent will not do well at attracting them. All teams should recognize girls as having the potential of being technically competent enough to have a leadership position. The team should also have a means of teaching those skills (through pre season projects, etc...). The robot education people here at UML have noticed that it takes more hand holding and a longer period of time to get the ball rolling on a girl's interest in robotics and sci/tech, but once they become interested, they go deeper into it, become very skilled, and remain interested (I witnessed this on an all-girls FIRST rookie team as well.)
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