Society of Women Engineers event advocates for pursuit of STEM among girls

Engineering students built structures out of marshmallows, gummies and popsicle sticks with Girl Scouts at an event Saturday to encourage them to pursue a career in STEM fields.

The Society of Women Engineers at UCLA held the event with Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles to spread awareness about the underrepresentation of women in engineering and encourage young girls to establish and retain an interest in the field. The event featured hands-on workshops in which participants built various structures, and panels in which current students in STEM spoke about their experiences in the field.

Sohni Thakkar, SWE president and a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, said she believes the annual event helps encourage young girls to pursue STEM.

Thakkar added she thinks exposing young girls to engineering from a young age can help them develop an interest in engineering as they get older. Boys and girls are equally likely to show interest in STEM in elementary school, but girls tend to lose interest in the field as they age, she added.

“Once a girl is introduced to STEM, they stay involved with the program,” Thakkar said.

Vicky Min, a second-year computer science student and the outreach director for SWE, said she thinks young girls do not receive enough exposure to STEM and that many women currently in STEM didn’t know about the field when they were younger.

“A lot of girls have done the program multiple years in a row,” Min said. “I have a lot of girls come up to me after events and tell me how cool it was and how they want to do engineering at UCLA.”

Min said she thinks this event helps young girls gain confidence as potentially future women in STEM, which could help them succeed in the male-dominated field.

Manas Kumar, a fourth-year computer science student and the treasurer of SWE, said he thinks women are underrepresented in the field due to low retention.

“They feel like it’s a boys’ club,” Kumar said.

Lindsey Morrill, a first-year aerospace engineering student, said she hoped to eliminate the perception that STEM is boring. She said she uses the term STEAM, which adds “art” into the STEM acronym, to show others that engineering is not as lackluster as people think.

“It appealed to me because of the stigma of artists pursuing art rather than engineering,” Morrill said. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

Morrill said she hoped to show at the event that STEM and art did not have to be mutually exclusive. She added that people should not be discouraged by the misconception that STEM is uninteresting.

Stephanie Du, a first-year chemical engineering student involved in the SWE outreach committee, said she thinks offering events that expose young girls to STEM is important in getting more women to pursue STEM fields in the long term.

“Girls don’t join engineering because they don’t see other girls in engineering,” Du said.

Min said SWE at UCLA hopes to continue partnering with Los Angeles communities and to expand its reach in LA, which it is currently trying to do through working with all-girls foster homes.