New Michigan Offseason Robotics Competition

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Mr V

Certainly there would be an uproar over that.

However the fact is that in many teams pit and drive crews are often dominated by males, not necessarily males only but often mainly males.

These girls only events encourage them to take on those roles w/o the worry of "not being as good at it as the boys" and not feeling that they have to "fight" to get the right to participate in those area.

Many of the guys on our teams really enjoy the girls events. For one thing it is nice to just watch an event w/o worrying about the robot. Plus we usually buy some of the cheapest Halloween wigs we can find for all the male mentors and students, put them on and get out there and cheer for our team.

You should try and get the author of this Seattle Times Op-Ed to Girls Gen. Events like this are also a great opportunity to try and recruit female mentors as well, because getting more women in engineering is often something women in engineering feel quite strongly about. If they go to an event and see so many girls excited about engineering, they may be hard pressed to turn down the opportunity to mentor them...