By Megan Mansell Williams  |  Photos By Courtesy Chabot Space and Science Center

 

If seeing is believing, then a new crop of girls now understands that smart, fun women are every kilogram the engineers that men are. 

Last spring, Cathleen Vasquez (B.S.’07 IEOR) and May C. Chu (B.S.’06 ME) teamed up with Techbridge, an outreach program of the Chabot Space and Science Center aimed at encouraging girls to get involved in technology, science and engineering. Vasquez, a student at the time, and Chu, now working at Intevac in San Jose, visited Peralta Creek Middle School in Oakland and led a classroom full of sixth- to eighth-grade girls in a lesson on simple machines.

They discussed gears, helped the girls assemble mini-lawnmowers and eggbeaters from K’NEX™ building kits, then had them take the gadgets apart and put them back together again. Before saying farewell, the mentors talked about different engineering majors, their own career plans and how they themselves got excited about the field.

“The girls were really bright, inquisitive and funny,” says Vasquez, who now works for Boeing in Seattle as an industrial engineer. “I really enjoyed working with them and was thrilled to see that they were interested in being engineers and scientists.” Six other Berkeley Engineering teams also took part in the project last year, so perhaps a small army of young women recruits will be headed toward Berkeley Engineering soon.

If you’re interested in volunteering as a mentor through the Techbridge program, go to www.coe.berkeley.edu/alumni/volunteer.