IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2012 - 28

in 2011, the split was much more even
because almost all of the fifth graders
came back, now as sixth grade Cadettes.
The volunteers and coordinators at Raytheon and the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts are looking forward to many
years of future success with the program.
Longtin has a personal connection to
the program's mission. While she's been
involved with Girl Scouts for 20 years,
she's worked at Raytheon for 25 years,
after receiving a dual degree in industrial engineering and computer science from UMass Lowell and a master's
degree in computer science from Boston
University. She vividly remembers the
moment a future in STEM clicked for
her. "I was in my fourth grade math
class at Catholic school, and the nun
was handing back a long division test
that the majority of the class had failed.
But then she said there was one student who had gotten 100% on the test,"
says Longtin. "I sat there waiting for a
boy's name to be called, but then she
handed the perfect paper to me." Then,
she adds, "It wasn't that I hadn't known
before that I was good at math, but at
that moment it was confirmed as a good
fit for me." Longtin and her colleagues
now have the opportunity to pass that
encouragement on to hundreds of young
girls through MathMovesU events.
-Leslie Prives

Bridging the Gap
Engineering with Australian students

What is an engineer? What do engineers
really do? How do they affect the world
as we know it? Could you construct an
informed answer to these questions?
Most likely you could if you are reading this magazine. Many adults could
not, though. Would the majority of children be able to answer these questions?
Why shouldn't they? We all know what
doctors, lawyers, dentists, policemen,
firefighters, waitresses, and taxi driv-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2012.2189447
Date of publication: 11 May 2012

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

Sixth grade students at
North Melbourne Primary
School test their high-rise
tower designs.

Fourth grade students at
North Melbourne Primary
School finalize their
high-rise tower design.

ers do for a living. Why is engineering
enshrouded in a cloud of mystery and
apprehension by nonengineers?
I set out to investigate some of these
questions after receiving the Anne E.
Borghesani Memorial Prize at Tufts University. As our world accelerates toward
an increasingly technology-based society, it is imperative that we understand
any misconceptions held by the next
generation about the development and
creators of that technology. If engineering is largely unacknowledged or misunderstood by children, distorted ideas
develop about what an engineer is and
how technology is actually designed and
implemented. Once established, these
inaccurate ideas about engineering
become more difficult to correct. This
divide between engineers and nonengineers should be minimized if there
is to be any sort of public understanding about how profoundly engineering
affects us as a global community progressing toward a better future. Funding
for many programs will depend upon
this understanding.

JUNE 2012

My research took place in Melbourne,
Australia, a city geographically almost
half a world away from the United States
but culturally very similar to many
coastal American cities. Specifically, I
was interested in the opinions of students
aged 8-11 about engineering. My goal
was to visit primary school classrooms
for about an hour and a half each and
have the students take a survey about
engineering, initiate an interactive discussion, then conduct a design challenge.
The first step was to get in touch
with various headmasters and teachers to set up these classroom sessions.
I unfortunately encountered resistance
from many headmasters and professors
at this initial stage. Numerous headmasters would sound interested in my proposed program when I spoke with them
on the phone, but would fail to return
subsequent calls. Some would outright
say that they were not interested in my
program and hang up. Interestingly,
without fail, the headmasters and teachers who did respond to my efforts all
mentioned that they are closely related

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2012