For the past few years, Girls Engineering Change has been working to introduce girls across the Raleigh area to the potential and excitement of engineering.
The group is a chapter-based organization that works to provide young girls with an interactive engineering experience. The group first appeared on NC State’s campus three years ago and has been continually active since its founding.
“Our goal is to show girls that they can be engineers if they want to be — that they can change the world through engineering,” said Lydia Ashburn, a third-year student studying biomedical engineering and the group’s current president. “We do that through hands-on outreach experiences. Our main events, which we’ve been doing for the past few years, are Saturday workshops. About 12 to 24 girls will come to campus and work with a college student to build something from a kit, such as a calculator, a Simon Says game or even a solar panel kit.”
Ashburn said these workshops generally last for two hours. Participating girls (grades 3-12) gain basic engineering skills, but Ashburn said the main benefit for participates is the conversation between the mentor’s hosting and the attendants. The idea is that participates become more comfortable in a college space doing technical work.
These workshops serve both as an introduction to engineering, as well as an opportunity to interact with students who are working to be engineers themselves.
“The workshops we have are free for accessibility,” said Casey Williams, a fourth-year studying industrial and systems engineering and the group’s current vice president. “It is significant that it is on campus because that’s showing these girls in the area that they belong on a college campus. When we’re there, we talk about what engineering is and all the different types of engineering, so we show them that whatever goal they want to do, they can do it through engineering.”
Although the workshops are a core part of the group’s outreach, they have begun to expand, coming up with ideas for longer, more personal programs.
“For the first two years, we just did the workshops on Saturday,” Williams said. “This past fall we had our mentor program for the first time, which was held over three consecutive Saturdays, so it’s more about sustained mentorship instead of girls just coming to one workshop.”
Throughout these activities, Girls Engineering Change has seen a number of girls coming back for more workshops weekend after weekend.
“We have a lot of people who come back, so they end up repeating kits; and they like it, but I’d like to reach more people,” Ashburn said. “We have this huge email list and our workshops are going to get filled up, but I’d like us to think beyond that and work harder to get new people and reach a broader audience.”
Despite the name, Girls Engineering Change is open to all students, as emphasized by their vice president.
“It’s not just women. It’s men and women who can support these girls.” Williams said. “To be a member of the club doesn’t mean you have to be a woman, it just means that you support women in STEM. There’s a certain power to volunteers who come to workshops who are women because it shows these girls that, ‘hey look, she’s a woman and she’s doing this at college.’ But for a man to be there, it’s a different kind of support like, ‘wow, he’s a man in engineering, and he’s telling me that I can go into engineering too.’ So we really do feed off of both, and it’s open to both.”
For more information, Girls Engineering Change can be contacted via email at gec.ncsu@gmail.com.
