Molly Gardner and Maddie Ruggiero were hard at work in an Olin Center computer lab. The room was full of circuit boards, lights,
wires, and computers. The place would be nightmare to the technically
challenged, but the two young women were obviously in their element, engrossed
in their work.
“Watch this,” Molly said as she typed a series of rapid
commands into the computer while Maddie pressed a button on the circuit board.
As lights on the circuit board begin to flash under a
cartoon picture of a television, an electronic voice began to speak: “I'd like
to watch some television, but no soap operas or talk shows please.”
They went on to demonstrate several other phrases which were
controlled by buttons and LED lights on the circuit board and convey basic
human needs (using the restroom, feeling hungry, feeling tired, etc.). Gardner and Ruggiero then explained that
their creation, called a talkbox, is designed to help severely disabled
children communicate.
This talkbox is exactly the type of project one would
expect to find Union's professors toiling over in an engineering laboratory,
but Gardner and Ruggiero are only high school juniors.
The two young women along with 17 others from Capital
Region high schools participated in the two-week EDGE Program (Educating Girls
for Engineering) from July 19-30. For the two weeks of the program, students
work with professors on a number of engineering-related projects. Students were
chosen for the Northrop Grumman Corp.-sponsored event through a rigorous
application process.
The major project had to do with electronic communication
devices and re-engineered toys to be used by severely disabled children. At the
start of the camp, the girls visited patients at Schenectady's Northwoods at Hilltop Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center to see first-hand the daily challenges disabled children
face. After the two-week educational camp, all toys and devices designed and
built by the students will be donated to the center. The toys were supplied by toy manufacturer Hasbro. Photos of the redesigned toys will be displayed at Hasbro's Pawtucket, R.I. offices.
“Young women are naturally service oriented, and we knew that
they would immediately take to the idea of helping disabled children,” said
Karen Williams, an associate professor of biology, and the program's
director.
Joanne Zagorda, a physics teacher at Shenendehowa High
School in Clifton Park, who spent her second year as an EDGE classroom assistant,
shared Williams' sentiment: “Meeting
the disabled children was important. It drew the girls into the camp and gave
them a motivating factor. They could specifically say 'I really want to help
that child' and then step into the classroom and do just that.”
While the task of creating the toys tested the girls'
knowledge of computer programming and electronics, their task to re-engineer
toys for the disabled children at Northwoods called for a different style of
engineering along with a fair share of creativity. On the final day of the
program the girls presented their toys to interested onlookers in the Old
Chapel.
Kaitlyn Driggs, a junior at Maple Hill High School in
Schodack; Kaitlin Gallup, a senior at Scotia-Glenville High School; Natalie
Krumdieck, a senior at Albany Academy for Girls; and Dianne Basirico, a senior
at Shenendehowa High School, re-designed a stuffed animal to make it appeal to
a 7-year-old autistic child at Northwoods.
The fluffy stuffed fish was overhauled with extra-soft sewn patches, a
squeaking nose, several lights, and a vibrating device that made the fish much
more interactive.
The girls in the group all agreed that designing the toy
with a specific child in mind made the task both meaningful and fulfilling and
are all planning to pursue engineering when they attend college.
“We did our best to make the toy really stimulate his
senses,” said Krumdieck. “Even though he has limited vision, we knew he loved
lights and tried to create something bright and fun. We were careful to create
something that was very safe and soft to the touch that could really play to
his sense of touch as well.”
In addition to the engineering projects, participants
received instruction on communication and public speaking to assist in their presentations.
They also had dinner with practicing women engineers from the area and an on-campus
sleepover.
Alison Kolakowski, a senior at Colonie High School, was drawn to the program because of the female
perspective it provided: “Here it is all girls and we get a much different
experience from our high school technology classrooms where it is mostly guys.”
Women constitute 51 percent of the U.S. population and 46 percent of the U.S. labor force. However, among recent graduates (1990 and
later), women represent only 8 to 9 percent of the engineering labor force. While
women constitute a high percentage of some science occupations — more than
half of all psychologists (63 percent) and sociologists (55 percent) are women
— their participation in physics and engineering remains small.
“The climate for women in engineering has
improved markedly in the past 25 years, especially the last five years, and we
want young girls to realize that a career in a technological field is both
viable and rewarding” said Williams.
The participants also learned that a career in engineering
has its share of good times “I was really surprised by how fast the time went
by. We had such a blast doing the computer programming,” said Krumdieck. “The
whole experience was so much fun.”