The Junior High Years: A Time for Beginning Engineering Orientation

The thesis of this paper is that the junior high school years are a key time in the development of orientation towards careers. It is suggested that since women are so grossly underrepresented in the engineering profession, efforts to attack the problem should include work with students at this period in their lives. A team-taught discussion of engineering as an interesting and vital career for women and men, accompanied by a dynamic demonstration of applied scientific principles, has been offered by Georgia Institute of Technology to two school systems in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Three programs-Lasers and Holograms (Electrical Engineering), Polymer Chemistry (Textile Engineering), and High Temperature and High Temperature Materials (Ceramic Engineering) have been developed by faculty in the respective schools and are described in this paper. Reception has been enthusiastic and the suggestion is made that such programs can act as catalysts to produce longer range programs which can help move us toward parity for women in the engineering profession.