This weekend, RPI hosted over 300 11th grade girls as part of the annual Design Your Future Day. This event, free for attendees—courtesy of General Motors—is designed to introduce the young women to various career opportunities that exist in the areas of science, engineering, and technology, and spark interest in female involvement in high-tech fields.
Students came from across the Capital Region and New England to participate in the workshops for Design Your Future Day. Some of the participating high schools included Albany, Amsterdam, East Greenbush, Colonie, Saratoga Springs, and Bethlehem High School, and students from Upstate New York, New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine also attended.
Barbara Ruel, director of Rensselaer’s Diversity and Women in Engineering programs and coordinator of the day’s events said, “DYFD gives young women the opportunity to explore intellectually stimulating and exciting careers in math, science, technology, and engineering and to meet young women like them who have already chosen to pursue such careers.”
This year marked the 11th year that the event has been held. It began with a welcome address from Pamela Daum ’00, lead systems engineer for Lockheed Martin’s Maritime Systems and Sensors division in Morrestown, N.J., Daum serves as the liaison between the technical operations team for the Australian Royal Navy and the Lockheed Martin technical operations team in the United States. Daum shared her personal stories and aspirations with the young women, including lessons learned in her time as both a college student and an engineer.
The young women also had an opportunity to attend an interactive panel, with past female RPI graduates. The panel included Erin Hoffman ’03, Laila Tabatabai ’06, Tara Marandino ’08, Tracy Mack-Askew ’98, Rachel Gitajn ’06, and Jordan Mader ’05. Small group discussions with the Rensselaer alumni gave the young women a chance to ask about the courses they can take to prepare for their future careers, the kind of college activities they can get involved in, and what they can hope to accomplish after graduating from RPI.
The students were able to participate in a variety of sessions that allowed them an idea of what kind of work can await graduates in the fields of science, engineering, technology, and architecture. These sessions covered a wide area of topics and were held across campus.
One of the sessions was “Fuel the Future,” where students learned about alternative energy and polymer membranes in a fuel cell. The young women were then able to build and run their own polymer membrane-based fuel cell in the Polymer Center.
Another session was called “Put the Pedal to the Metal,” held in the JEC Student Machine Shop. Students tried their hands at various tools, such as a plasma cutter. They also learned about how manufacturing engineers create designs.
The young women also had an opportunity to direct a few of the remote-controlled RPI blimps during the session “You’re in Control” in the Armory. One of the participants in this session, Meghan Maher from Saratoga Springs High School, said, “The blimps are really cool. My friends all said their sessions were pretty fun as well.”
Some said the day really encouraged them to pursue a career in the high-tech fields. “I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do before,” said Aditi Chaturvedi of Guilderland High School. “Science and technology is always encouraged for girls, but there isn’t as much information on what they do. The sessions were really informative and after talking with some of the students, I am really interested in pursuing a career in something like this.”
