Program Vies to Bring Women to Engineering

UCSD engineering professors, in partnership with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, have launched a new educational project to encourage 12- to 15-year-old girls to develop interest in a future career in scientific fields.

The program, called the ‘IT-E3 Tools’ project, will allow San Diego County middle school students to monitor environmental factors near their schools and analyze the data they collect. The students will then be able to apply the concepts they will have learned to an online, multi-player science challenge overseen by the program’s creators.

‘Despite the fact that information technology touches every aspect of our lives, women remain a minority in engineering enrollment at U.S. universities and in technology careers,’ UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering Associate Dean Jeanne Ferrante stated in a press release.

According to Ferrante, the idea was developed after Jacobs’ ‘Teams in Engineering Service’ program, which has proven successful at attracting female participants.

The program will be funded by a National Science Foundation grant, which will award $1.2 million over the next three years. Students at Gompers Charter Middle School and UCSD’s Preuss School are among those chosen to participate in the project.