IT'S A GIRL THING

Shelly Leachman
STAFF WRITER
Date: February 24, 2007

Seated on hard brown carpet, encircling a pile of plastic straws, Dominique Rubens, 14, and three other Madrona Middle School girls attempted to construct the tallest, sturdiest straw tower possible.

Their creation resembled a small house with the longest, thinnest of antennas -- several straws stuck together and more than twice the height of their base, with the top flopped toward the carpet ominously as the pros began making their rounds.

"See how your building is tilting a little? What made it tilt?" a wandering ExxonMobil engineer asked the girls, participants in the company's "Introduce a Girl to Engineering" event this week. "Maybe a bigger base next time. ... If you design it right, you'll build it right."
"That was interesting," Dominique said afterward. "I like learning how things work and what has to happen to make them work. My grandpa was an engineer, so I'll probably follow in his footsteps someday." Bingo.

Dominique's words are exactly what industry types want to hear. There's a burgeoning effort to excite girls about science and engineering -- subjects where women excel, but professions where they remain in the minority.

A report released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics, which studied the transcripts of 26,000 American students who graduated from high school in 2005, said that after years of lagging behind, girls are now taking more math and science classes than boys -- and earning better grades in such subjects.
Yet only 20 percent of college engineering degrees are earned by women, who still heavily favor nonscience disciplines such as liberal arts, according to National Science Foundation statistics.

And though they make up half the nation's work force, women represent only 9 percent of all engineers across the U.S.

"There is all this potential and talent that is not considering or being recruited into engineering careers," said Sharon Tinker, a chemical engineer for ExxonMobil. "Math and science is pushed for boys because they're seen as successful in that. It's not seen as a natural fit for women. We need to get past the traditions and stereotypes that society has about math and science and technology ... so girls see this as a real possibility."

Pointing almost unanimously to an outdated stigma that girls aren't good at science, more organizations nationwide are working to combat that perception.
Sally Ride Science, a company founded by the former astronaut in 2001, aims to "show kids that science is creative, collaborative, fascinating and fun," according to its mission statement. The Girls, Math & Science Partnership, based at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, targets girls 11-17 nationwide with projects including the girl-friendly science Web site www.BrainCake.org. A similar effort -- www.EngineerGirl.org -- is produced by the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, D.C.

That's only a sampling.

In fact, there's a drumbeat to interest all kids in math and science-centered careers that grows louder every year, as a dwindling tech-trained American work force has seen many such jobs sent overseas.

A business-consortium campaign called Tapping America's Potential has estimated that as baby boomers retire, the science and engineering work force will be cut in half, leaving literally millions of jobs open, with few people to fill them. Of 1.4 million bachelor's degrees awarded in 2004, only 452,000 were attained in science and engineering disciplines, National Science Foundation statistics show.
"The competitiveness of the U.S. economy really does depend on the development of more engineers and scientists," ExxonMobil's Tinker said.

So why aren't kids interested?

Overall, insiders blame an image problem born ages ago -- that science and math are for geeks -- and forever played up in pop culture, from Christopher Lloyd's strange, wild-haired Doc Brown in "Back to the Future" to the bow-tied, lab-coated host of "Bill Nye the Science Guy."

Those in the industry want kids to erase those images and see engineers as hip, as intelligentsia's rock stars or secret agents, like Bond, James Bond.
Raytheon invoked the spirit of 007 at its El Segundo campus this week, putting on a Bond-themed skit for 100 high schoolers to hammer home the point that science can be cool.

"We want to show them there are really exciting things you can do with math and science," said Angela Martinez, a Raytheon managing engineer who participated. "It's not boring, it's not just formulas and it's not just reading books. You can work on space sensors, lasers. You can build a hovercraft with things you find in your garage."
Particle board, a few screws, heavy plastic and McGyver's favorite fix-all, duct tape -- that's all it takes, apparently. Those were the ingredients that Raytheon's visitors were given to build hovercrafts capable of lifting and carrying one of their own, powered only by a small leaf blower.

Huddled over his hovercraft-in-progress, Austin Rondash, 16, an El Segundo High School junior who teamed with three others at the Raytheon event, said: "Oh yeah, I love building stuff. This, Legos when I was a kid, whatever. Math later, build now. I do enjoy math, but I'd rather build."

What many kids don't understand, say working engineers, is that by combining math ability with building skills, the more opportunities there are to build, and build big. Almost every industry -- from cosmetics to cars -- employs scientists or engineers to create things ranging from electronic components to rockets, according to Shelley Rommelmann, an ExxonMobil engineer.

"Engineering alone is so broad," she said, citing a pervasive lack of knowledge about the vast array of career options as another reason kids aren't more interested. "It touches almost everything."

"It's all about opening their eyes to the possibilities," concurred Nancy Ton, a Madrona Middle School science teacher. "I have kids say to me, 'Science? What does science have to do with anything?' And I say, 'What doesn't science have to do with? Do you brush your teeth in the morning? A scientist created that toothpaste.' "

From professional engineers to science teachers, nearly everyone interviewed for this story grew up with a parent or, in some cases, entire families who worked in science or engineering. And therein, insiders say, lies the key to getting more girls -- and kids in general -- interested in science: exposure.

"They need role models," said Marcia Matz, also a science teacher at Madrona Middle School, whose father was an engineer. "If it's familiar to you, you know it is a possibility. They need to see it and go, 'Oh yeah, I could do that.' "

shelly.leachman@dailybreeze.com