Winning the Future

A note from the President about his education initiative.  Interesting, but we still have a long way to go - I don't think we have everything we need to compete.



"Companies like Intel struggle to hire American workers with the skills to fill their needs."

To give you further perspective on that:
My research group is made up of 9 graduate students.  Of those, three are American.  One is an undergraduate, one is a masters student, and one is a doctoral student.  My company employs roughly 16 engineers (majority having doctorates).  Of those, 13 are Americans.  My company needs a specific type of engineer to help us create new products, unable to find an American candidate we're interviewing people from China. 

Women Leaders

I ran across this article today (I think from a tweet by Felicia Day) and thought it was worth mentioning here.

The video is from a TED event for women and features Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.  In this talk she shares her experiences being a female leader and says there are three very important things women can do:

1. Sit at the table
2. Make your partner a real partner
3. Don't leave before you leave

I'm guilty of violating number one; last week I wrote about how I feel about what I'm doing and I did not give myself credit.  Lunch with the VP of my division today made me feel better and help me realize that I'm awesome. 

Anyway, watch the video, it's really good.

Women in Power

Friday I ran across an article about an interesting woman in power.  Technically it was just a brief interview with Diana Tremblay, the VP of Manufacturing and Labor Relations at General Motors, but one thing she said really stuck with me; which also happened to be the main point the article seems to be drawing attention to as well.  Diana said:

I have never felt that I was given an opportunity solely because I was a woman, but I also know that it helped at times because it made me unique. 

I don't know if I can say the same for myself.  It's a question I was wondering a lot last year as I was trying to figure out what to do after graduation.  I was finishing my bachelor's and master's at the same time, working on my master's thesis, looking for a job, and working 24-32 hours a week.

My undergraduate degree is closely tied to the construction industry, an industry that was not doing so hot last year, and I wasn't getting a lot of call backs for interviews.  I finally asked the company I worked for about a job and originally they mentioned relocation to an operating unit in the Carolinas to do renewables.  The boyfriend was upset ("why can't you find a job here where I am?")  so I kept looking around.  Another month later my company asked me if I'd ever considered going to school for my Ph.D.  It wasn't something I'd ever considered before, Dr. KB?  I don't know.  But I didn't seem to have a whole lot of other options.  Fast forward a couple of months and I am looking around universities for a research group to work with for my doctorate.

Many days that summer I wondered if the opportunity I was given was because I was a female.  My company has mostly undergraduate co-op students and they have a strict policy about only hiring those with at least a master's degree, though everyone they'd hired in the last four years had their doctorate.  I was an intern (not a co-op) who was just supposed to be there for one summer.  On my last day one of my projects wasn't done and my project team asked the director if I could stay.  The director talked to the VP of the division and my internship was extended indefinitely.  Why did they let me stay?  Maybe because I was providing support for a lot of projects, maybe because I was cheap to pay (who needs money when you're in school?), or maybe it was because I was close-by compared to the other co-ops from Madison.

It's a question I've never voiced out loud, perhaps because I'm scared of what the answer will be.  Some days at work I feel on top of the world: I'm accomplishing mini-projects left and right, I feel helpful, I feel like I'm contributing, I'm pulling my own weight.  It's those days where I feel like anything I've achieved is because of my own merit, not because another female engineer was needed.  Then there are the days where my stuff deforms, my coating fails, I spend too much time on a task because I can't figure out something simple. It's those days where I question why I am where I am.  It also makes me wonder, am I the only one who feels this way?

I wonder if young engineers (male or female) who are just starting their careers feel the same way occasionally.  A combination of "I don't know enough!" and "I taught my co-workers something new!"

I think I'm going to put "work on self-esteem" for my New Year's Resolutions list.

WANTED: Mentor

I need a mentor, or at least someone I can ask a lot of questions to! I have so many questions that I don't know the answer to such as:

• How do you manage publishing papers under one name (maiden name) and then another name (married name) later on?
• How do you balance school life, work life, and family life?
• How easy is it to have children and still work on a doctorate?
• What do you do when you propose to someone and they laugh at you?
• If your "husband" gets a job in a new city/state would it be better to quit everything & move or stay and finish out the doctorate?
• How do you go about publishing something on your own?
• How far should one downplay their achievements to their potential in-laws so as not to overshadow what their son has done?

I haven't found a good source for these types of questions yet. I've asked what questions I know my co-workers will know the answer to, such as the publishing on your own question, but I really don't know anyone else in the same type of situation as myself. There are two other female engineers where I work at: one is a austere older women who I do not socialize with while the other is a younger women who is very nice and willing to answer all sorts of questions that I throw her way. The problem is that she got married right out of high school, had children, and then did her mechanical engineering BS & MS degrees. No one else I know is pursuing a doctorate in engineering (or anything else for that matter) and I don't really know who to turn to. My other source of information is my sorority, Alpha Omega Epsilon, but I haven't come across anyone there I know who is in the same / was in the same situation either.

My boyfriend suggested trying to find a forum or blog or other internet source where I can read and learn what others have gone through. That lead me to the blog by Young Female Scientist (YFS) and How to be a Good Graduate Student (because the author is a female and wanted to focus on women's issues...but didn't). YFS is a good blog and is very interesting for me to read because it highlights issues I may eventually encounter while working in academia but doesn't answer all of my questions and it doesn't appear to be exactly what I am looking for. I've gone through all my latest Society of Women Engineers magazines looking for information but have come up short there as well.

Where else do I turn to? Any one have any good sources of information or should I just hope I eventually ask enough people that I find good answers? Also, if anyone has answers to any of my questions or wants to volunteer to be my mentor let me know! I need help.

Women in STEM

One of my favourite topics for women is STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I am all for increasing the number of women in STEM programs and careers. Yesterday I ran across several articles on the topic of women in technology and what can be done to increase involvement. Most of the thought for why there weren't a lot of women in STEM stemmed from a lack of development in childhood - more specifically through the toys we are given based on gender.

I believe this article (Why We Don't Need More Women in Technology...Yet) says it nicely:

Before you retort with your personal vote of support for female education, I’d ask you to take a stroll around a toy store and imagine you can’t read. Imagine, if you will, that you’ve been taught a simple system of color-coding: Pink and purple is for girls, and blue, green and gray are for boys.

You will immediately notice the drastic segregation — the gendered version of the Jim Crow-era South. There are entire aisles of pink, and other aisles devoted to dark blues and greens. Imagine that you are only “allowed” in the pink and purple areas of the store, and examine the toys you find there.

The vast majority of playthings for little girls encourage them to think about nurturing others and caring for themselves — including, to a large extent, their appearances. These aren’t inherently negative lessons to learn, except for the fact that these lessons exclude others that deal with problem-solving, strategy, physics… you know, the kinds of things you learn from playing with Lego, K’nex, Stratego and other male gender-coded games and toys.

I can relate to this a lot. Sure I had a large amount of Barbies and other dolls but I also had a good-sized Lego collection that I used to make little cities and houses, lots of houses. This turned into building doll houses, which turned into my bachelor's in architectural engineering, which turned into plumbing engineering, which turned into my master's in environmental engineering, which brings me to where I am now: my PhD in engineering. I doubt I would have been in a STEM-field today if I had stuck with making stories up and having my Barbies act them out.

I haven't made up my mind completely about the other article I read yesterday (Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Telling People How they Should Feel About it) but it did make the comment:

Marina Martin, a business consultant, agrees with Schappell. “If you really want to see more uteri in tech, grab your nearest 3-year-old girl and make damn sure she’s around computers all the time.”

I'll agree with that. So much of our thoughts/ideas/impressions about how things should be start when we're little. No one can dispute that the younger years are crucial for development. But this also terrifies me for if/when I have children of my own. So much pressure!