12:45pm | Some 400 elementary and middle school girls from as far away as Chino Valley will be on hand for Cal State Long Beach’s (CSULB) 11th annual “Women Engineers @ The Beach,” an engineering education conference designed to attract young girls to engineering.
The event will take place on Friday, Oct 21, from 8:30am – 2:30pm, in and around the Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) building complex at CSULB. The campus is located at 1250 Bellflower Boulevard. Parking for the event is available in Lot #11 off of Palo Verde Avenue.
Participating young girls will learn about the variety of disciplines involved in engineering and related sciences. The conference’s long-term goal is to help increase the number of women in both academia and industry. Currently, women comprise less than 10 percent of the engineering workforce and less than 15 percent of the engineering student population.
At the conference, sponsored by NASA and Fluor and co-sponsored by the Society of Women Engineers, Center for Human Factors in Advanced Aeronautics Technologies, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the CSULB Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department , students will be involved in hands-on activities in a variety of one-hour workshops designed to introduce them to engineering, technology, human behavior-based product design, robotics, structural engineering, and computer science.
A number of activities, organized by engineering student societies, will be on hand, and are designed to enrich the students’ critical reasoning skills. CSULB student projects will also be on display, including a formula-one race car, rocket, and a concrete canoe.
Lily Gossage, director of engineering recruitment and retention for CSULB’s College of Engineering, has organized “Women Engineers @ the Beach” since 2001. She believes that aside from introducing young girls to engineering, the event also encourages school counselors and teachers to promote engineering at their school sites.
“Research tells us that girls are just as capable as boys at succeeding in math- and science-based careers, but opportunities for young girls to explore the mathematical-logical part of cognitive thought are limited,” said Gossage. “Socio-cultural issues and male and female expectations of career roles are barriers that delay the discovery of the career until much later.”
Participating schools include several from Long Beach Unified schools, including Hudson International Studies Magnet, St. Joseph High, Lindsey International Studies, and Jackie Robinson Academy. Two Anaheim Union High Schools will be represented in Oxford Academy and Anaheim High. Other schools will be Adams High (Redondo Beach), California High School (Whittier), River Springs Charter (Chino Valley), Lakeside Middle School (Little Lake City), Paramount High (Paramount), and Jane Addams Middle (Lawndale).