IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2012 - 109

Figure 4. Anna Sklenar and Sarah Thermer
working on robot shooter assembly.

Figure 5. Anna Ybarra and Rachel Silva
drilling holes and adding pop rivets to the
robot arm appendage.

Figure 6. Team members getting ready to
go into competition at WPI Regional.

Figure 7. Athena's Warriors-FIRST Robotics Team 3182-at the FIRST Robotics Kick-Off
at Farmington High School, Connecticut, in January 2012. Top row, from left: Precious
Iriaghamo, Kasandra Price, Francesca Bustamante, Delaney Patterson, Anna Ybarra, Danielle
Rinnick, Rachel Silva. Bottom row, from left: Caitlin Piker, Cherice Waller, Anna Sklenar, and
Mikayla Stricklett.

especially in engineering. Although
statistics are improving as far as girls
and women entering the STEM fields,
the number of women engineers is
still low compared to their male counterparts. That is reality, and I cannot
and will not argue that it will be an
issue, but my experience while mentoring this team leads me to conclude
something that I myself wouldn't have
understood if I hadn't been a part of
this team for at least two seasons. The
epiphany is that girls need to be nurtured into believing in themselves-
that they are as capable as boys of
performing the tasks required of them
to enter into the STEM fields.
Over the many years that I have
worked in technical positions, I have
not always, if at all, had the luxury of
working beside another woman. I have
always affirmed that working among
my male counterparts has not been an
issue. In some ways, I felt liberated to be
among the few women to enter the
male-dominated field of engineering.
But there is the unspoken truth that it
hasn't always been an easy road to be
the only woman in the room. At times,
it has been a road filled with uncertainty
of acceptance from your coworkers and
a nagging feeling that your work just is
not good enough. Although stereotypes
of women's abilities to work in technical
fields are quickly fading, I still find

instances in my area where girls are
being recommended to look at other
choices for high school classes besides
technical ones, purely because counselors believe they would not want to be
the only girl in the classroom.
Perhaps it is a generational ideal or
a cultural belief that displaces girls and
women from fields that were traditionally held by men. What my experience
on the FIRST robotics team has provided me was an understanding that
for girls to work to their full potential,
whether it be in a technical field or not,
they need to know that they can do the
job once trained and that they have
support from those around them. Yes,
the girls on the robotics team will
eventually need to start working with
males to get a better understanding
that it is not an all-girl world out there.
What an all-girl team offers is an environment where members can learn
engineering principles and not feel so
intimidated, with a little more freedom
to discover what they are truly capable
of doing. They are also getting an
appreciation that engineering (STEM
fields in general) have no gender, economic, or racial boundaries-just science, and that is how it should be.
For more information on Athena's Warriors, please visit www.
team3182.org.

december 2012

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

109

http://www.team3182.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2012