"Wow! That's Engineering!" Signature Event hosted by SWE-Boston
On Saturday May 2, 2009, SWE-Boston hosted our second "Wow! That's Engineering!" event... this time it was a signature event supported with a grant from SWE HQ, which required us to significantly expand the scope of the event. We hit our target of at least 200 girls registered to attend, and at least 35 volunteers signed up to support the event. On May 2, 144 girls from grades 6 through 12 attended the event and we had 47 day of event volunteers!
After registering and parting ways with parents (this year's event was "students only" due to space and planning considerations), girls proceeded to the take-apart reverse engineering activity. Volunteers mingled with students as the students were encouraged to tear apart the old donated electronics to see what was inside. What a sight to see!
Forty-five minutes after registration opened, most of our attendees had arrived and our event chair Tracy Phillips kicked off the event with a short, passionate speech about why girls should consider an engineering career. Then they followed the appropriated colored flag bearer to their first and second project sessions.
We offered eight different sessions:
-Telling the Computer What to Do - Programming, led by Julie Tittler
-Project Runway - Textile engineering, led by Lynn Reis and Carol Barry
-Electronic Matching - Electrical engineering, led by Pam Chuang
-Water Works - Plumbing engineering, led by Lisa Zagura
-Banana Smash - Packaging engineering, led by Kate Youmans
-Green Building - Mechanical engineering, led by Anna Murray
-Thumb Piano - Acoustical Engineering, led by Deb Kumpf
-Build an Electric Motor - Electrical Engineering, led by Patrice Westrate
Attendees selected their top 4 choices when they registered. Then, the planning committee pre-assigned girls to groups based on their preferences.
After the two project sessions, all of the girls met in the large room to engineer their own lip gloss! Volunteers assisted as teaspoons of shortening were measured and kool-aid was mixed. Finally, SWE-Boston volunteer and strong supporter Dr. Ellen Ferraro, Deputy Director of the System Validation, Test and Analysis Directorate for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), closed with a thought provoking keynote speech.
In order to receive a goodie bag on their way out, girls had to turn in a completed event survey. The data from these surveys will be compared to the pre-event data we collected, and in true engineer fashion, we should be able to "measure" the success of this event. However, judging by the energy in the room and the smiles on both attendee and volunteer faces throughout the day, calculations are not really needed to know that we met or exceeded all of our expectations with this event!
For more information on WOW! and other K-12 outreach opportunities, please visit http://aspire.swe.org
