Camp introduces girls to engineering

Girls participating in a Wando High School summer camp keyed at getting them interested in engineering run the gamut from those who are dead set on the fashion industry to future architects, engineers and chefs.

But Wando High teacher Deborah Kennedy wants to convince girls that they can become engineers and that the field might be something they even like. Many girls associate engineering with greasy car engines or steel welding, which scares them off, Kennedy said.

"I think they're afraid of it for the most part," she said. "They've done a really good job of getting females into the medical profession, which used to be almost exclusively men. They've done a really good job of getting them into the law profession. I think engineering may be the next one, but the technical skills involved scare a lot of girls away."

Ninth-grader Holly Good said some of the computer stuff can get a little dull, but she was ready to get to the end of the week when her group will plan a memorial park for the Charleston Nine. Although the park plans haven't exactly been commissioned by Mayor Joe Riley, the budding architect was excited to work on something more meaningful with a human element.

"That sounds awesome, see that sounds really fun," she said.

The camp is part of a Society of Manufacturing Engineers national initiative to boost interest in science, technology and engineering, but teachers at Wando chose to focus on girls because of the low female interest in their own classes as well as nationally.

The weeklong summer camp introduces girls selected for showing high promise in math and science classes to some of the computer programs and creative thinking skills engineers use to figure out complex problems. Camp activities range from creating 3D computer models of real life objects to "instant challenges," in which the girls have only 15 minutes to create something from planning to finish. One instant challenge was a competition to pass a golf club as many times as possible in one minute through a homemade structure made of lasagna noodles, Twizzlers and plastic drinking straws. In another challenge campers assembled and programed simple robots.

During the school year, Wando High offers seven different high school engineering classes taught by degree-holding former engineers. But even with the diverse course offerings, female enrollment at the high school level is still not what the teachers wish it was. It's not that girls aren't good at engineering; they're just not as interested, the teachers say.

David Roemer, an engineering teacher at Wando who was teaching during the camp, said the gap is definitely noticeable.

"It's one of the last remaining areas where we don't have parity with women," he said, noting that his few female students usually perform in the top of their classes.

Overall enrollment of women by percentage in engineering programs was down in the National Science Foundation's most recent 10-year study from 2005. Then women made up only 17.2 percent of undergraduate engineering students.

Numbers are low at colleges within the state, too. The University of South Carolina at Columbia had only 25 female graduates in engineering fields in spring 2007, accounting for 2 percent of graduating women. Men earning engineering degrees totaled 14 percent. At Clemson University the male-female ratio of engineering grads from 2006 was higher for women only in bioengineering by one graduate. Male and female grads were tied in environmental engineering and science with seven graduates from each gender. In all other engineering fields at Clemson, though, men dominate.

Kennedy said the answer is showing girls that engineering is about working with people whether it be through building prosthetic limbs, creating new textiles and studying nature. Women are more attracted to the education and health fields, according to a recent analysis from National Center for Education Statistics, but Kennedy said that's just because they perceive those as fields more related to social work.

"Females just add such a broader perspective to the whole process in any field," she said. "We need to tap that. We need to get more girls involved."