Young teens in week-long camp
put hands on engineering

Early this summer, Rekya Nayar wanted to be a lawyer. But a few days into the 2004 week-long pilot Engineering Summer Camp at Lehigh, the eighth-grader from Springhouse Middle School seemed to be changing her mind. "Engineering is starting to look pretty good," she said.

Nayar and eight other middle school girls who attended the camp used gumdrops and pasta to simulate beams and trusses, glue and borax to make "funny putty," and pond water and dyes to visualize water treatment. The camp, sponsored by the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, aimed to open the girls' eyes to a possible career in engineering.

"We need to attract girls to engineering at this early stage of their lives because nationally, fewer than 20 percent of engineering majors are female," said RCEAS Dean Mohamed El-Aasser. "Middle school girls need to see that engineering is doable. This camp lets them work with female undergraduates, graduate students and engineering professors."

The camp, which ran July 12-16, was an extension of the day-long CHOICES (Charting Horizons and Opportunities in Careers in Engineering and Science) Program that is held at Lehigh each spring and sponsored by the Society of Women Engineers.

Carly Newhardt, a camp mentor and an industrial engineering sophomore at Lehigh, attended a day-long CHOICES event as a seventh-grader.

"CHOICES definitely helped in my decision to become an engineer," said Carly. "I think that in high school more girls get pushed towards English and history as opposed to sciences like engineering, which is why CHOICES and the camp are so important."

The idea for extending CHOICES from one day to one week had been brewing for a few years, said RCEAS Associate Dean Rick Weisman.

"Greg Tonkay (associate professor of industrial and systems engineering) and I wrote a proposal for one about five years ago," Weisman said. "It never came about but the model was there and some things were already in place."

At the summer camp, the nine middle school girls were mentored by more than 30 graduate and undergraduate students and faculty members. The engineering college hopes to open the camp to as many as 24 girls next summer.

"We call this week a pilot because we wanted to learn how to relate to kids this age and inspire them," said El-Aasser. "We spent a year developing this program, but we needed to test it to measure its success...This is how engineering develops - you have to ask, 'How can we use this and make it work?'"

Women as role models

Almost all the activity leaders in the summer camp were female graduate and undergraduate students. "We felt that as role models, women needed to be teaching the concepts and leading the activities," said David Sudol, a research scientist in the Emulsion Polymers Institute at Lehigh who helped design projects for the pilot program.

"I went to something like this when I was younger and it sparked my interest," said Jessica Shelala, a civil engineering graduate student. "Engineering isn't a well-known field because it's not outwardly glamorous, and I don't think people realize all the fields within engineering."

"We want to try to interest them," said Katie Payne, another civil engineering graduate student. "We're hoping that they leave with an understanding of what engineers do."

Royce Morgan, a computer science major who interned in the RCEAS office last summer, did an Internet study of camps for girls that deal with science and technology.

"Royce created a report that gave us a really good synopsis," said Weisman. "He was a terrific resource."

Camp teachers used chemicals, beakers, and computer programs to relate complex engineering concepts in interesting, inspiring ways and show the girls how engineering requires creativity, organization, problem-solving and people skills.

In a bridge-building project, the girls learned the principles of truss bridge designs by using pasta and gumdrops to see how triangular structures are stronger than square ones. The girls then utilized math, science and engineering principles in a computer simulation to design and analyze truss bridge structures. They applied varying loads to the structures to see how the members were affected in tension and compression. Finally, they chose a design and built model bridges.
 
Their bridge-building assignment led the group to the ATLSS (Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems) Research Center, which has tested structures ranging from George Washington Bridge suspender cables to earthquake-resistant steel frames. At ATLSS, the girls tested the load of actual beams and explored sources of pressure that can be applied to a building or bridge.

"Did you see how the beam bent back into shape?" one girl exclaimed. "I didn't think that would ever happen!"

"This definitely is the best project," said Rekya Nayar, while gluing beams together. "I also liked the water-purifying experiment, though."

"I am so surprised how involved these girls are," said Victoria Dimonie, principal research scientist in the Emulsion Polymers Institute. "Everyone wants to work on the project!"

In a chemical engineering project, the girls tested different kinds of funny putty and created original formulas for it. "I liked the putty project because it showed different ways to do the experiment," said Erin Pamukcu of Swain School.

A second week-long project challenged two groups of girls to create a proposal for rehabilitating the unused rail corridor that runs through the South Side of Bethlehem. After surveying some of the space, the girls brainstormed and created a questionnaire, which they distributed to members of the local business community. With results in hand, they decided which concepts to develop in their proposals, which had to consider issues such as safety and what to do with existing rails and ties. They created posters and modified a model of two sections of the rail corridor running between New Street and Webster Street. They presented their proposals to their families, mentors and a member of the Bethlehem city planning office.

Future plans

The RCEAS hopes to expand the Summer Camp by adding more students, more mentors, and more projects.

The college has also sent reports and pictures of the campers' achievements to their principals and counselors.

"Hopefully, they can share their presentations when they go back to school," said El-Aasser. "This would give them an opportunity to [help] other kids learn from their experiences.

"Another possibility is to allow this program to be replicated at other institutions so that other students can have the same kind of experience."