Walking the Talk of Engineering Outreach

One could argue that I started taking engineering outreach seriously when I resumed my position as a structural engineer after an $18\text{-year}$ sabbatical as a stay-at-home mom. I had been tutoring high school calculus and physics for a couple of years by that time and had been alarmed to learn how little interest some of even the most mathematically minded students expressed in engineering. So much was my concern that I considered becoming a math or physics teacher and might have pursued that option, in lieu of resuming my engineering career, had it not been for one problem: I had a credibility issue. How could I advocate for a profession I had walked away from, knowing that any student I could envision as an engineer might see hypocrisy in my advocacy?

It is easy enough to wag a finger at the systemic devaluation of a time-honored profession. But we all know that a system is no more than the sum of its parts. And for my part—as a female engineer who once tasted the magic elixir and decided to taste no more—I worried I had become more a part of the problem than ever I might be part of the solution.

But that was before I bumped into my friend Tom Soell on the sideline of a high school soccer game. Tom had been a coworker in my earlier engineering days with Boulder, CO, based JVA, Inc. Today, he is the company president.

Time on the sidelines gave us time to catch up. I mentioned that I was enjoying tutoring at the high school, thanks to the persuasiveness of the school’s tutoring coordinator, Pam Allen. Though I initially volunteered to tutor algebra or geometry, when Pam learned of my engineering background, she said, “Well, algebra and geometry would be great, but what we really need are calculus and physics tutors.” I politely mentioned that I hadn’t opened a calculus book in what seemed like too many years. And she responded that as an engineer, she presumed calculus had not been that tough to learn the first time. “How tough could it be the second?”

Not knowing how else to respond to a question like that, I agreed to give it a try.

Tom grinned and suggested that he could say the same thing about engineering, then teased, “Next thing you know, you will want your old job back,” or words to that effect.

Not very likely, I thought. But somehow the idea took root, and the conversation ended with Tom suggesting I take the summer to think about it, before adding that he would call me in the fall to further discuss the possibility.

True to his word, he did call. At the interview, I asked if he had considered how much retraining I might need. And this was his response, which I will never forget:

“To a certain extent, we train every engineer who walks through our doors without any guarantee what return we might see on that investment. We know you to be smart, dedicated, and fun to work with. Do you have any idea how much easier our job would be if we could say that with half as much confidence about everyone we interview?”

And that’s when it hit me: I hadn’t just been alarmed by the decline of interest in engineering. I had been genuinely offended by it—and not for myself! Engineering is a noble profession filled not with automatons, as some seem to believe, but with very genuine people—dedicated, caring, fun, “people” people, even. I’m not sure I fully appreciated that point before Tom demonstrated it so clearly in the conference room at JVA.

Our responsibility as professionals is twofold: to address the problems we are presented in a timely and comprehensive manner and to support our coworkers that they might do the same. To the extent that we are responsible for public welfare, any other approach is simply not acceptable. This takes more than technical skills. This takes the people skills to lighten the mood of a situation when you can’t lighten the load—the ability to put our responsibilities into perspective so that they do not become overwhelming.

Regardless of which skill set comes more naturally to us—technical or people—the rewards of acquiring and acknowledging both are found in the accomplishment of seeing a project through and the enjoyment of sharing that accomplishment with others. And by sharing, I don’t mean idly crowing about accomplishments that no one person could possibly achieve alone, but feeling a vital part of something much bigger than just us. For it is that something bigger that not only sustains us when the pressures build, but ultimately determines whether we sign on for more or not.

This is a subtlety that is hard to impress on younger generations when our popular culture continues to cast engineers as so-called nerds lacking even basic people skills. Kids understand that engineering is challenging. What they don’t understand is that with the proper attitude, they won’t have to face those challenges alone. Who is going to help them develop that attitude, if not us?

I was first identified as an engineering candidate in high school by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). It was then I learned that my grandfather had been a prominent mining engineer and businessman in his day. Now, before you think what a great advantage that might be, consider for a moment the expectations—real and imagined. My grandfather was by all accounts brilliant. He was also, as was typical of his generation, a chauvinist—meaning that the one member of my family I was somehow expected to emulate—and arguably the only one with any real sense of what I should expect—was likely rolling over in his grave at the very suggestion.

Add to that an untimely and frightening authority male encounter of a personal nature, and my sense, as I considered engineering schools, was that I was about to be thrown to the wolves. As attitudes go, this one was not very helpful. Nor did it help that the first college I visited was not a large coed state university but a small, dedicated engineering school, where I was surprised by what might best be described as a standing ovation by lunchtime patrons at the campus eatery. Curious, I looked around to see what the fuss was about, and seeing not another lady in the room, it slowly occurred to me that the honor might in fact be mine. It was then that the room began to spin, and the next thing I knew I was propped in the shade of an oak tree being told to take deep breaths. Believe me, this was not how I had imagined the day progressing. But embarrassment is not always a bad thing, not when it gives us cause to reflect. The source of my embarrassment that day was clearly that I had overreacted to what seemed, in hindsight, an innocent enough gesture of good will. And I knew it. So my mantra as I enrolled in engineering school became simply and very deliberately this: Take as many deep breaths as you need, just don’t overreact.

This attitude, together with a sense of humor, served me very well over the years and eventually became one of the bases for some Notes on Trust that I put together with the help of Bob Hunnes, JVA’s most recently retired president, for the purpose of sharing with young women considering engineering. These notes are included at the end of this text.

There were others, including one notion inspired by my grandfather’s memoirs, a text I first read with considerable apprehension. But I have warmed up to the old man over the years and have recently taken to collecting copies of his book as they become available on the Internet. I keep one by my desk at the office and one by my desk at home. The others are saved away for my children.

Much of my grandfather’s story impresses me, but the section that touches me most is this passage, which concludes his description of his time as “Chairman of the National Engineers’ Committee when [he] asked the Engineers’ Joint Council to prepare a report as to the war potential represented by fixed nitrogen facilities within the borders of Germany”:

“In retrospect, I often feel that I should have been more successful in the attempt I made to persuade someone of the necessity of wiping out the German nitrate plants. It is probable that I could easily have obtained an appointment to the Bombing Command in London. I could have gone there with the endorsement of Bob Patterson, Morgenthau and the engineering profession and with a good chance of being effective.

“Thus ended six years of Government war work, $4\frac{1}{2}\text{years}$ at $1 per year and $1\frac{1}{2}\text{years}$ at $50,000 per year. They were years to be remembered for some satisfaction and many disappointments.” (McConnell 1966)

While I can’t compare my career with my grandfather’s, I do know the feeling he describes that comes of thinking, Perhaps we could have done more.

I was graciously offered that opportunity. Though I will always defend my decision to stay home with my kids, kids do eventually grow up, and as they do, their needs change. Remarkably, my engineering background, when combined with the character of the people I worked with, provided me a chance to shift the dialogue I shared with my kids toward professional participation just as they were considering what professions they might choose for themselves. I am quite certain that I could not have planned it better had I tried.

For this reason, when asked why I returned to engineering, I answer, quite simply, “Because I could.” And for that opportunity, I will be forever grateful.

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Of course, it’s what we do with our opportunities that matters most.

Coincident with my return to engineering, I became active on behalf of the Robert Earll McConnell Foundation, a charitable trust started by my grandfather in 1936. With a final nod to my grandfather’s regret of not doing more, I began researching engineering outreach with an eye toward charitable organizations that would provide me the opportunity, both as an engineer and a volunteer, to leverage the foundation’s investments.

Much of that research pointed to early education as the most fertile breeding ground of interest—and by corollary, disinterest—in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. From my own experience as an engineer, a mother of three, and a classroom volunteer from preschool up, I couldn’t agree more. We don’t introduce young children to art and music with the expectation that all will become artists and musicians, after all. We do so with the hope that all will grow to appreciate the arts. Why should we expect any more or less of the creative art of engineering?

My dad—a country doctor, not an engineer—referred to the instructions included with any purchase requiring assembly as the “corrections,” in open acknowledgment of his preference for figuring out how to assemble the darn things on his own over being shown how by another, even if, as often was the case, that meant getting it wrong the first time. Now there are those who would describe this as a typically male response. And who am I to say that it’s not? Though honestly, the behavior doesn’t strike me as all that different from that of every $2\text{-year}$ -old I’ve known—male or female—which, to my way of thinking, hints of nurture as much as it does of nature. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Gender aside, it is that childlike yearning to master our universe that schools must capitalize on, regardless of the subject being taught. For it is that yearning that first inspires us to embrace the challenges before us. And it is in answer to that yearning that self-sufficiency, and the confidence that grows from it, first is discovered.

Consider, for a moment, your average preschooler. Ask parents to name these free spirits’ favorite words, and many will glibly answer “No” or “Mine,” as these troublesome words often wear so heavily on our sensitivities. What we tend not to appreciate is that just as popular with this younger set are the words “Let me,” as in “Let me pour the milk,” “hold the baby,” “push the elevator button.” In other words, Let me realize the satisfaction of doing it myself. Let me please try. Deny children the opportunity they openly seek often enough, and how soon will it be before they stop asking for the opportunity or, worse, stop seeing the untested as opportunity at all?

Often our inclination as parents is to do for our kids rather than encourage them to do for themselves—to show them or tell them rather than encourage them to see for themselves. Why? Well, when it’s $2\text{-year}$ -olds we are dealing with, it is simply easier and more expedient to do so, and, as typically frenetic parents, ease and expediency are important to us—that and because we quickly realize that any “corrections” to misguided efforts will necessarily fall to us.

The problem is that we tend to be creatures of habit, and how we start out treating our $2\text{-year}$ -olds is often how we end up treating our teenagers. Tempted by the presumed ease and expediency of controlling our children’s behavior, we often overlook more effective, if time-consuming and potentially messy, methods of inspiring creative and responsible behavior in the interest of limiting the kind of “corrections” we are forced to deal with.

Not surprisingly, what is true for many parents is also true for many teachers and school administrators. Overwhelmed by the injustice of children paying for their parents’ mistakes, by limited resources, and by a mandate to meet standards that could change before the school year is out, they too can be as tempted by the presumed ease and expediency of controlling students’ behavior as they are discouraged by the challenge of inspiring creative or responsible behavior. And who can blame them when at jeopardy is not spilled milk or a less direct route to the ninth floor, but, “for the first time ever, a drop-out rate that has future generations at risk of being less well educated than present generations” (Ritter 2009)? Never mind that the “corrections” in this case are so often left in the hands of public correctional facilities.

The question then becomes, How do we introduce engineering to a younger audience in a manner that is both age appropriate and inspiring? And the answer, necessarily at times, is to shift our focus from the academic tools of the trade to the creative applications of the trade.

I imagine a day when classroom dry-erase boards go the way of chalkboards and all classrooms are outfitted with computer “smart boards.” On these monitors, teachers, with only a few swift taps or strokes of a finger (not so different from how most operate today) would have the option of creating or opening any of a number of learning avenues for their students, which would then appear on the monitor in full Pixar-quality 3D animation—a simple machine, for example, complete with pulleys and levers.

Students with matching tablet monitors would be given the time and assistance to consider two basic questions: How does the machine work? What is the machine’s purpose? (For how are we to reasonably decide a purpose without discovering for ourselves the potential?) During this time, they would virtually hold the model in their hands, turn it around, look at it from all directions, raise the levers, and pull the strings—whatever it takes to become familiar with the mechanism while imagining how they might put the thing to use. No fuss. No muss. No right or wrong answers in this virtual reality. No needed corrections.

Once the hands went up, and after listening to a plethora of creative possibilities, the teacher would then explain what the machine was, what it was actually used for, and by whom it was used—Archimedes’s block and tackle used by the ancient Greeks to quickly load and unload his improved catapults from sailing ships, for example. For this would not be a high school physics class or a first-year mechanical engineering course, but an integral part of an elementary school social studies lesson on the changing tides of civilization.

Introducing kids to engineering concepts such as mechanical advantage and leverage in a natural and historical context would not only raise the level of curiosity in the sciences and appreciation for the application of mathematics, but also have the added advantage of destigmatizing innovation to the benefit of budding scientists and nonscientists alike. The idea is not to be teaching advanced mechanics to preschoolers, but to be continually whetting and satisfying the appetite of the curious with hands-on, interactive, and above all practical activities while introducing and reinforcing the notion that not all scientific advances occur in vacuum chambers, without funding or other forms of public and private support, and much less without social consequence.

Ultimately, the goal is twofold: for kids to see innovation as more than random flashes of genius but as an iterative process they can all have a part in, and for them to distinguish the pure wonder of science from the deliberateness of applied science so that they might incorporate a sense of stewardship into that application. This is our world we are talking about. Our awesome responsibility. And it is going to take all of us working together to manage it properly.

Once innovation is restored to its rightful place, both contextually and in the psyche of our youth, and once the stigma is gone, the high school model could be very different and the transition from high school to engineering school a natural one for those so inclined. Critical thinking comes naturally at this age. A broader understanding and appreciation of the application of STEM disciplines—one that extends beyond our popular culture of video games and special effects—would empower our youth to consider STEM disciplines as an integral part of any solution to the growing list of challenges facing the world today.

Though efforts to reform STEM education are currently in the works across the country in response to President Obama’s Race to the Top program, it will be years before the rewards of these efforts are realized. Fortunately, there are great resources and “shovel-ready” preengineering programs available to first bridge the gap and later supplement meaningful STEM education reform.

Of these, the website Engineer Your Life (EYL), the PBS reality show Design Squad, and the coordinated outreach efforts associated with each have impressed me most. ASCE is a long-time partner and supporter of these programs, which are both produced by Boston’s public television station, WGBH.

At the 2008 launching of EYL, Charles Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke of declining applications to engineering schools, of women as a largely untapped resource, and of their recruitment, therefore, as a logical first step in a national effort to raise the level of competition among engineering students and, in so doing, raise the bar for U.S. engineering. Though EYL was specifically designed with young women in mind, I applaud Dr. Vest for acknowledging at its inception that playing fields are leveled for the benefit of the competition—not the competitors.

Most of us realize that as females, young women will be a minority among engineers. Recognize also that, as engineers, they will be an even greater minority among women. That’s a heck of a support group to be distanced from. And if you don’t believe me, consider the effect the predominance of women in nursing and legal assistance has had on the increased number of women doctors and lawyers over the last few generations. How many nurse moms have asked their daughters, “Why be a nurse if you can be a doctor?” And we wonder why engineering hasn’t kept pace.

Eventually, this dynamic will change. But for now, the lack of a compassionate and understanding—and by that I don’t mean warm and fuzzy, but knowing—support group is the potential reality that young women must consider when facing a relatively high-pressure career in engineering.

In the tradition of SWE and all professional societies, the creators of Engineer Your Life understand the subtle difference between empowering young people with a sense of professional camaraderie and pandering to the demands of political equitability. With time, I hope that we, as a community of professional engineers and engineering mentors, will understand the importance of both accepting and acknowledging male and female engineers as equal contributors of that support. Maybe then we all will stop counting.

But that is the woman in me talking…

The engineer in me can’t praise Design Squad and the outreach efforts associated with it enough for their potential for reaching a wide range of kids of many interests and ages, their hands-on and challenging method of providing both purpose and avenues for accomplishment to each endeavor, and their call for both parental and community involvement to realize that potential in the form of Design Squad clubs. Whereas the Design Squad TV show presents teams of older teenagers with real-world design challenges that are tested and judged at full scale, the Design Squad clubs scale down many of these same design challenges to fit the budget and time constraints of an after-school program. In the clubs, kids can experience the fun of hands-on learning while discovering the design process of brainstorming, building, testing, and evaluating.

To discover more about the learning opportunities and projects of Design Squad, please visit http://pbskids.org/designsquad/. Follow the Parents & Educators and Engineers links to see the support offered by WGBH to anyone with an interest in promoting innovation. Check out the online volunteer training or the list of websites for buying and budgeting bulk supplies for an appreciation of how much of the work of starting up these clubs has been done for us. And then please consider contacting your own area after-school coordinators about starting a Design Squad club in your area.

Gizmos and gadgets aside, what I love most about Design Squad is that young people get to see and, with our help, experience the dynamic of collaboration at work—the individual and collective attitudes (yes, attitude matters) that hold teams together and those that tear them apart. They get to see diversity (no, we don’t all fit the stereotype) as an unscripted resource for fresh ideas. And perhaps most importantly, they can grow to appreciate that we all are challenged in different ways and so approach challenges differently. But in the end, we all want the same thing—to feel as though we contributed something to be proud of. The fact that our contributions tend to be more meaningful when artfully combined with those of others—well, now, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

While a solid foundation in math and science will always be a prerequisite of engineering, it is creativity and collaboration that stand out in my mind as the true hallmarks of the profession. Unfortunately, these are not characteristics commonly associated with engineering, to the profession’s discredit and to the disservice of those seeking a practical, ever-impactful, and creative outlet for their desire to make a difference in the world.