BONUS Episode! The VIEW of Engineering

Get excited because we decided to do one more bonus episode of VIEW!  In this episode we talk about the importance of bringing more women into engineering for the future of the field. We talk about the academic pathway there, why it is so important to get girls interested in STEM by the age of 10, and where the future of engineering is going. Finally, I take a moment to thank the incredible women who helped with this podcast, the female engineering students of Cornell.

https://swe.org/research/2024/employment/
https://swe.org/research/2024/degree-attainment/
https://swe.org/research/2024/job-outlook/
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_318.10.asp
https://visit.engineering.cornell.edu/
https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/first-year-applicants

Transcript

Introduction

Hi, I'm Teri Carey and welcome to VIEW, Voices of Incredible Engineering Women. Are you interested in math and science? Are you curious about the world? Are you an engineer? Well, maybe you don't know yet! The world of engineering is huge and we want girls to be included in the future of it. So grab a cup of coffee, get your curiosity going and listen in as we talk to real women studying engineering at Cornell.

We hope you enjoy our view.

Podcast Segment

Teri

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to VIEW. I'm your host, Teri Carey. And today, we are going to do something a little different. We have explored all of the majors that Cornell currently offers through the College of Engineering. But, I really wanted to do one more bonus episode for you all to showcase why it is so important that we encourage more women to join the field of engineering.  All season you have heard stories about women in history and their incredible contributions to the engineering world, inventing new materials, winning Nobel prizes, and continuously using their creativity and ingenuity to improve the world around us.  In addition, we have interviewed the future of the field with our amazing current students who are ready to take on huge challenges and making their dreams come true by launching things into space, decreasing the distance from lab bench to patient’s bedside, and improving infrastructure around the world. So this is a space where I want to again appreciate these voices and stories, and also create a call to action. We know women are underrepresented in engineering, in fact according the Society of Women Engineers website only 22.5% of the bachelors degrees in engineering go to female students. And while there are some areas where women are well represented like Biomedical engineering with 52.5% female representation and environmental engineering with 48.9%, there are also fields with less representation like aerospace engineering with 17.9%, computer engineering with 15.7%, and mechanical engineering with 17.6%. You all are the future in these fields, and have the power to change these numbers. And even with these small representation numbers, look at the amazing things women are doing in the fields. 

So thinking about all this, you may be wondering. Is there space for me? As a woman can I fit at this table of engineering and how do I do that? Well, the fact of the matter is that engineering is a field that is growing. It will continue to grow and we actually may be running out of engineers to keep up with the demands of the field. SWE looked at the job outlook and measured the differences from 2022 to the growth prediction for 2032. In every area of engineering except for one, there was job growth out of the 28 that they looked at. The biggest growth is in computer related occupations. Software developers will have a 25% increase in those 10 years asking for 410,000 more jobs in the field. In this data, they also captured the annual wage for these career fields. Software developers made an average of $127,000.  Computer and information sciences will also see a big increase with a 22% growth in those 10 years. The average salary is $136,000. We need to fill these jobs and look at the salaries that can be made with them. Having a six -figure salary will give women financial stability. Engineering can be the door to a world of opportunity and bring those who have come from low socioeconomic statuses to the possibility of earning a wage that can support them and their families. Some other salaries highlighted on the list were aerospace engineer $126,000, biomedical engineer $99,000, and materials engineer $100,000.  So yes, there is room for women, in fact we need women here. We need their unique point of view, creativity, and talents. 

So how do you get there? What is needed to become an engineer and be admitted to an engineering college? The base of any great engineering education is math, more specifically, calculus. And the love of math needs to start early, before high school, before middle school, I’m talking about pre-school, kindergarten and elementary school levels. In addition there needs to be an interest and love for science - specifically chemistry and physics, and more and more attention is being put on computer science as well.   I was watching the Bill Nye documentary and in the documentary he said, there is evidence that if a person is not interested in science by the age of 10, it is very difficult to get them interested in it and to develop a lifelong passion for it. So that’s where we start.  We foster that love of math and science, show them female role models, and break the stereotypes of what engineering looks like, or who engineering looks like.  Programs that encourage girls to take an interest in these subjects and see the power in how we can problem solve through these sciences is really important.  

I hope that the small ripples of introducing girls to STEM in preschool and kindergarten do make waves in the future of engineering, reflecting our population and bringing more women into the career field. I think it is important to point out how critical it is to have places like Cornell Engineering where women can see themselves in leadership, reflected in the undergraduate population, where women are celebrated and from day one have been included in the “…any person, any study…” philosophy. I hope more communities hear this and assist in the change to bring that 22.5 % of female undergraduate degrees up to 50%. You are the future. Whether it is you putting on the lab coat or helping other women put theirs on, we need to all be in this together.

OK. I want to end this episode with lots of gratitude and appreciation for everyone who has listened to even five minutes of this podcast. I was privileged to get this platform and to be able to bring the microphone to 14 incredible women doing unbelievable things here at Cornell. I loved hearing their roots, where they started being interested in engineering, and then also their dreams of what their bright futures will be and how they are creating that future here at Cornell Engineering. Each one of them had a different story. They came from all over the world, from California to New York, from Mexico to the UK, and they all found engineering through different avenues. Some had family role models. Others overcame the pressure of being told not to go into engineering. Some participated in activities and organizations that encouraged girls to participate in STEM. They brought their interests of science, math, business, policy, art, all with them in their journey. They were all so different. And yet each time I interviewed them, I came away with the same feeling of awe, inspiration, and gratitude that they found engineering. Their stories of what they are doing here in their project teams, their research, their acapella groups, the communities that they built within their majors, their study sessions, and across engineering, the camaraderie of these women is inspiring. I also really loved hearing each and every one of them tell me about the feeling they had when they were accepted into Cornell Engineering. 

Connection. That is one of the most human qualities in this world. Being able to connect with others, to see yourself in a situation, in a job, and that is exactly what we set out to do in this podcast. We wanted to connect with girls and women together to bring them into this world of engineering through these stories. And so I want to give a very special thank you to each and every Cornell engineering student who came on this podcast and told her story. Ellie, Kayla, Melanie, Ashley, Avantika, Molly, Regina, Karnavaal , Beth, Ashley, Verena, Azzizah, Sophia, and Alondra. Thank you. Your words reached many girls, girls wondering if engineering was for them, if there was a place for their curiosity and creativity, a place for them at the table. You all introduced them to parts of engineering that they may have never even known about. And again, thank you for your incredible voice.

When I graduated undergrad, I was in my campus store and I saw a sign that had a quote on it that really struck me. It said, “Life isn't about finding yourself. It is about creating yourself.” I bought the sign and I gave it to my best friend and roommate for graduation, knowing that we had just worked really hard to get to this point and that the journey would continue to build our futures. Unbeknownst to me, she also saw that sign, bought it and gave it to me for graduation. It still sits in my house as a daily reminder that you need to build your life. You need to go out and create a pathway to get to your future. I can't think of a better quote to describe these women doing just that. And I have to say this quote highlights not only these women of the future, but also rings true for many women from the past. We explored remarkable women who blazed a trail and worked hard to create themselves and their future for others in engineering. Women like Ada Lovelace, Eunice Newton-Foot, Jill Tarter Cornell, Stephanie Dupont, Mae Jemison, Swati Mohan, Nora Staten Blanch, and Kate Gleason. Their stories were sometimes lost to history, but their impact is still profound. They overcame the pressures of their time and created their own pathways when there were none to be found. It is such a privilege to highlight these women and to give them their time and attention they deserve. I have learned so much about engineering, about listening, about our university, and more importantly, about the importance of using your voice to tell your story. I have truly loved getting this view of engineering. And so for one more time, I'd like to say, I hope you learned something today. And maybe it was that you're an engineer.

Closing

VIEW, Voices of Incredible Engineering Women Is a podcast produced and written by the Cornell Engineering Admissions Office. Please remember to like, follow, subscribe and share our podcast and help us bring engineering to the ears of young women everywhere. To find out more information about Cornell engineering please visit our website visit.engineering.cornell.edu.