[EWCP] EWCPcast 9/16/12 - Gender Diversity

[Jon Stratis]

Ok, here's the write up. It's a little amazing how easy it was to write - everything just flowed!

In order to understand how mentoring an all-girls team has changed my views on students in engineering, I think it's important to understand some of my personal background first.

As a typical boy growing up, I was exposed to plenty of opportunities to get hands-on experience with engineering. Like many boys, I had a large collection of Lego's, and "playing" with them consisted of building interesting structures. In doing so, you tend to learn what makes a structure stable and able to support a lot of weight, and what makes it fragile. Likewise, I built many model cars, planes, and other models, which helped me to see the importance of a clean, easy to assemble design and how a good paint job can really make something pop. In Cub Scouts, and later Boy Scouts, I got to use use real tools to build a toolbox, bird houses, and fake reindeer for the lawn in the winter. I got to use even more tools in preparing for the Pinewood Derby, where I was first exposed to a bandsaw and a router at a neighbors house. Participating in that competition also taught me a lot about physics, specifically gravity and friction. Anyone who's learned to win those competitions knows all of the tricks for reducing axle friction to a minimum, and bringing the car's weight up to the maximum!

As a budding engineer, my mom would tell you that she knew I would be an engineer when I was 8 and asked her why some appliances needed 2 prongs on their power plug, while others had 3. She wasn't able to answer the question, but it gives you a good idea of where I was headed at even that young an age.

Later in my childhood, I got to help my dad fix things around the house. This included replacing electrical fixtures and installing ceiling fans, running coax to rooms that didn't already have cable, and building quite a few things, like a work bench with 4 draws, 8 cabinets, and 3 shelves. All of that simply furthered my hands-on approach.

For me though, the turning point came in 5th grade, when a teacher offered and after school class on computer programming. I signed up with a couple of friends, and all told there were about a dozen boys in the class - however, there were no girls! From that point on, I was hooked on computers. By the time I got to High School, I already knew two programming languages.

My High School offered several Computer Science classes, and I took them all. Of the maybe 30 other students in those classes, only 1 was female. Going on to college for Computer Engineering, I saw this pattern repeated out of maybe 50-100 Computer Science/Computer Engineering majors in each class at the school, there was 1 female the year ahead of me, 1 in my year, and 2 (twins) the year behind me. Graduating and starting work showed no better. In my first group, there was 1 female out of approximately 30 employees. In my group today, the ratio is a little better, if only because there are fewer total employees - only 1 out of 18 is female.

Throughout all of this, you can easily count the number of female engineers I encountered - 6! During that time, I encountered literally hundreds of males in engineering or working towards it like I was. And unfortunately, not all of the girls I encountered were model engineers. I hate to admit it, but I knew a couple in school that passed their classes only by enticing classmates to help them with their assignments.

All of this resulted in a poor outlook on gender equality 6 years ago. While I didn't treat the females I worked with any differently, there was always a little voice in the back of my head wondering how much I would have to carry that project, like I did more than a few times in college. It's something that I hate admitting, and something you probably won't get very many people to admit, but I guarantee it's something that everyone has thought going into a project, based on stereotypes established over a lifetime of interaction with others.

So, 6 years ago I heard about FIRST for the FIRST time (haha, look, a pun!). Boston Scientific (where I continue to work) was sponsoring 7 teams in the Twin Cities, and they advertised for this "area mentors meeting" being held at the University of Minnesota for anyone interested in mentoring a team. I thought it sounded great - my favorite class in college was Autonomous Robotics. So, I decided I would go… but I didn't want to go alone. I convinced a few of my friends to check it out as well, and the 4 of us showed up to listen to what mentoring was like. Halfway through the session there was a refreshments break, and at that point we were approached by the Technology teacher from Visitation. She saw one of us was wearing a Boston Scientific shirt, and since our company was sponsoring her team, she wanted to ask us to mentor the team. She was quickly approaching a critical point - if she couldn't find some mentors for the team, she would have to cancel it within a week. Of course, we knew this was an all-girls team, and we were a little hesitant. After all, based on my previous experience, how much harder would it be to work with girls instead of boys? After some arm twisting and a little begging, we relented and joined the team.

Fast forward to our FIRST build season (haha, another pun!). None of us knew what to expect, and it ended up being much harder than any of us anticipated. But then again, all rookie teams say that! My outlook started to change the last weekend of the build season, when we finally decided that the suction design we wanted to use to pick up tubes (This was Rack 'N Roll) wasn't going to work. Two of the students left that meeting, and came back the next day with an entirely new design, and the materials needed to get it working. It blew me away that two high school girls could do that after only being exposed to engineering for a few weeks.

Fast forward to kick off of our second year (Overdrive). My outlook had started to change, and this year would bring with it even bigger changes. To start with, half the team was returning, and half was new. We knew what we were getting into, and had a better plan for the build season. Then we hit a snag the very first day - we couldn't agree on a design! The team was split down the middle. The returning members wanted a simple lap bot, knowing how difficult building a robot was, while the new members wanted one that could do everything. We compromised with a design that saw incremental additions until we had a robot that could do everything. Seeing the level of dedication and determination the team showed was an eye opener. Based on my past experience, how could you ever get 20 girls in one spot to be so energetic about engineering?

Later in the build season, we have change #3. The students approached the mentor team and asked us to step back a bit and let them do more. Wow. I had never encountered a female in engineering who asked me to step back so she could do more, and here was an entire team asking just that. All I could say was wow.

At this point, I was pretty much sold - we want women like those we have on the team in engineering. It would be foolish not to have them. Despite knowing that, however, my eyes weren't truly open to the situation around me at work. It just wasn't something I thought about. So, fast forward a couple of years (BreakAway, I think). We had built the program and had an amazing team at this point, with many students who had been on it for several years. As we approached our FIRST competition of the season (Are these puns getting old yet?), they had another request for us: They wanted to create a "No mentor" line. You know when you get to competition and there is tape outlining each pit? That was the "No mentor" line. They wanted us to stay out of the pit unless they asked for help on something. They felt they knew what they were doing, that they knew everything to do with the robot, and could handle any issues. They wanted to prove to themselves, us, and the rest of the community that a group of hardworking girls can do it without help. And they could. In fact, I got bored sitting in the stands… so I volunteered as an inspector, and later a LRI.

It was at this point that I really realized that I simply had never seen girls like this in my professional interactions. None that were stand out, above and beyond, great engineers… and yet here we were creating them. I started to ask myself "How do we do this on a larger scale?" I started seeing female students that were every bit as good at programming as I was at their age, despite them not starting until joining the team. Where were the equivalent when I was growing up? I certainly never saw them.

I don't have all the answers at this point, but one thing is certain: I won't be leaving my team until they kick me out! I am now fully dedicated to helping increase female representation in engineering, something I never would have thought of a decade ago.

I hope this helps give some insight into the issue we face here in the US in gender diversity for engineering, and how its traditionally been. Getting these girls interested in High School is great, and it's what I've dedicated a large portion of my free time to, but how do we do it earlier? How do we give girls the same opportunities I had growing up? How can we get parents across the country to look at their 8 year old girls and recognize them as future engineers? How can we get those same girls to realize it themselves before they even get to High School? Those are the questions that plague me because of my involvement with The Robettes, and I haven't found a satisfying answer yet.