Simsbury High School Engineering Program Fueled by Girl Power

On January 27, 2019, prospective engineering students, eighth graders from Henry James Memorial School (HJMS), traveled to Simsbury High School (SHS) for the SHS Engineering Department’s “Girls in Engineering Day.”

This is the fifth year of this annual program, a cooperative effort by the SHS Technology and Engineering Department to attract girls to the often male-dominated classes. The organizers of the event engaged the volunteer services of several of the female SHS engineering students from all grade levels who facilitated the tours, demonstrated the tools and equipment, and served as a sounding board for questions from the HJMS students.

One group of eighth graders started off at the Architecture and Drafting room, staffed by Career and Technical Education (CTE) Supervisor Dr. Wendy Ku of SHS’s Project Lead the Way (PLTW) engineering program. Dr. Ku got the students started on their digital designs on computers and then demonstrated 3-D printing of the digital files, a method by which successive layers of molten plastic are injected until the designed object is complete.

Directly across the hall, the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) lab featured the high school’s FIRST Robotics team robot. Hesitant at first, a couple of the girls took a turn at the controls, driving the four-foot-tall robot. Technology Education Coordinator Kurt Dougan encouraged them, urging, “you can’t break it, I promise you!” Technology Education teacher Andy Bakulski, who was teaching next door, leaned in with some of the students in his class to observe the workings of the robot, as eighth grader Jane Potter deftly controlled the robot to push a chair across the lab floor.

When it came to trying out the Electrathon car, which is built in the Engineering Design Development class and raced each year at Lime Rock Park, there was no shortage of volunteers. Grace Meyers was the first to hop in, as Dougan gave her some tips to drive it down the hallway, most importantly “go slow, very slow.” She performed as if she had been driving for years. Nandini Ramanathan applied slightly more of a lead foot, taking off like a shot but braking quickly. She chuckled, “I’ve never even driven a lawnmower before!”

Other demonstrations occurred in SHS’s wood and manufacturing shop, such as the lathe for crafting custom wooden pens and the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine used to construct signage. Senior Jessica King demonstrated how to put on the welding helmets along with the protective jacket and sturdy gloves, emphasizing the importance of safety. Then she let the girls try their hand at using the welding gun on scrap metal. The sparks flew, and, it was hoped, interest was ignited about a manufacturing field traditionally male dominated and in need of skilled workers.

In Room 128, Engineering teacher Dave Salonia showed the girls the power of engineering by giving them hands-on experience with the computer-aided drafting (CAD) software, AutoDesk Inventor, a skill taught in Introduction to Engineering Design. Right off the bat, he taught the girls some new vocabulary, employing and explaining engineering terms like shell, extrude, and fillet, as their goblet designs took shape in their computer screens. Salonia lauded the capabilities of the program. He said, “You can design a space shuttle with this program, it’s so robust!”

After the tours of the facilities, Joncia Lytwynec, Director of Instructional Technology/CTE and FIRST Robotics team coach, spoke to the girls in the SHS Amphitheater, commenting that the skills she learned as an engineer help with anything she does today.

Lytwynec introduced Melanie Marchetti, an engineer with extensive experience in the business, including more than 25 years at GE. Marchetti’s journey began not as a skilled engineer but as a flute player “who just wanted to play the flute forever.” She was persuaded to find another path by a pragmatic parent. Said Marchetti, “My mom said people who play the flute forever live in their mother’s basement forever.”

So she combined her passion for flute playing and started out as a music engineer, eventually branching out into others areas of engineering, including nuclear power. Said Marchetti, “Now I live in my own house!”

To help the eighth graders make the connection to how engineering is so entwined in everyday life, she asked the students, “Ten years ago, what happened if you dropped your phone? It shattered. Now screens are so much stronger. That’s all engineers.”

Next the panel of engineering student volunteers shared with the audience personal anecdotes about what it is like to be a minority in the field—and sometimes be the only girl in the class. “Don’t let that intimidate you!” cautioned Tess Mylander.

Senior Valerie Lee had attended the Girls in Engineering event as an eighth grader, after which she went home and told her mom that this is what she wanted to do for a career. Lee pointed out some very basic differences between boys’ thinking and girls’ thinking.” She said, “We’re building a shopping cart and a boy said, ‘How about if we put some lasers on it?””

With a dramatic shrug she said, “I mean, why??”

However, the boy had an idea for how to mount those lasers, which turned out to be very useful to the project. “Sometimes a bad idea leads to a good one,” concluded Lee.

SHS Engineering student volunteers for the Girls in Engineering event were:

• Grade 9: Katie Perlitz, Alexandra Peterson
• Grade 10: Caroline Cordani, Lucy Lyttle
• Grade 11: Samantha Fong
• Grade 12: Grace Cummings, Brikene Grajcevci, Jessica King, Valerie Lee, Theresa Mylander, Sidney Palinkas, Samantha Aiyathurai