Engineer_Chicks

nerd girls

2008-07-20T18:54:07Z

thought of you all when I saw this, kinda!

http://www.nerdgirls.com

it's some engineering students who are trying to spread the word that smart women are hot. they're generally against those either/or baskets that say that you have to be nerdy and shun everything feminine if you want to be scientific. they've been on msn and newsweek lately, so there's a good buzz going.

engineer_chicks @ 2008-07-17T14:15:00

2008-07-17T13:22:29Z

Hello all,

I'm currently in my foundation year of my electrical and communications engineering degree spending my lovely summer holiday researching for coursework. I'm getting a bit discouraged however. I'm great at the soldering in electricals class when we're making circuits and I ace my theory tests. And the physics I excel at. But the Maths :( I am terrible at simple Maths alone- I had to take GCSE Maths twice and then I passed with a C and for the life of me Differentiation and Advanced Trigonometry make me dizzy.Algebra I can do in my sleep, Boolean algebra and Logic are relatively easy but they only make up a fraction of the modules. Should I just give up and do something more practical or should I tough it out?

Most of my friends that have either finished Uni or are in their second and third years pretty much say the first year is the worst but I have 3 more years of this and I want to know if I'm wasting my time if I'm finding it extremely difficult to master a class dubbed 'the engineers first aid kit'.

Job openings

2008-06-15T06:13:08Z

I work for a job board, called GOJobs.com.
We have several major Engineering companies with job openings.
Many of these companies are specifically hiring for diverse work places.

Some of the companies include HDR, RW Beck, MWH Global, PAE Group, and many others.

I think we have something like 1,000 engineering jobs. From Mechanical, Civil, Industrial, and Chemical Engineering jobs.

Here is a link, Good luck with your job searches.

Engineering Jobs -http://www.gojobs.com/engineering-jobs.html

Babies and college

2008-06-03T02:57:43Z

I am in the process of finishing my master's and continuing on to PhD, and have found that I am pregnant. Looks like I will be doing this more or less alone. Still nervous about telling my advisor, because I am afraid he may see this as a sign that I won't be as dependable for research (to him, research == life, just ask his 2 ex-wives). Anyone have experience being a mother during their engineering education, either single or married?

Hi

2008-06-01T14:55:18Z

Name: Jessica
Location: Santa Monica, CA
School: University of Illinois - Chicago
Degrees Obtained: Bachelor's
Major(s): Industrial Engineering
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: Methods & Ergonomics
Employment status: Industrial Engineer and Head of Quality Control.... and lovin' every minute of it!
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: Eventually I'd like to get my MBA and my PE certification
What would you like to get out of joining this community? To have the chance to give and get advice to/from other girls in the engineering world. While I've been lucky and haven't experienced too much discrimination for being a woman, however there are challenges that I've encountered that I'd imagine men don't.

Becoming a Licensed PE

2008-06-01T05:35:59Z

I have my EIT certification and some work experience. I'm starting to look ahead to sitting for the PE exam. (I'll be eligible in two years).

So for anyone out there who is licensed...

1. What prompted you to get your PE?
2. How did you prepare for the exam? How difficult did you find it?
3. Who did you get to write your letters of rec? (My state requires five.)
4. What are the pros/cons of being licensed?
5. Where in your career were you when you got your license?
6. Would you do it again?

Feel free to throw in whatever else you think is relevant.

Thanks in advance!

(Cross posted to engineers)

New Here!

2008-05-17T14:16:09Z

Name: Silvia
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
School: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zuerich (ETHZ)
Degrees Obtained: Bsc in Electrical Engineering (in September 2008, hopefully)
Major(s): Power Electronics, Mechatronics, Power Systems
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: Power Electronics
Employment status: none
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: finish Bsc in September 2008, finish Msc in September 2010
What would you like to get out of joining this community? Meet new people with similar interests (and sometimes problems)

Optoelectical engineer Dr. Kristina Johnson is first woman to win the Fritz Award

2008-05-16T19:28:41Z

From my IEEE email...I figured people here might be interested. The Fritz Award is described as the highest award in the engineering profession.

ASHINGTON (16 May 2008) -- Dr. Kristina M. Johnson, provost and senior
vice president for Academic Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, recently
received the John Fritz Medal from the American Association of Engineering
Societies (AAES). She is the first woman so honored.

Johnson was one of seven honorees during the AAES’ 29th annual awards
ceremony in the Great Hall of the National Academy of Engineering on 5 May.
She was cited “for her internationally acknowledged expertise in optics,
optoelectronic switching and display technology.”

The John Fritz Medal, referred to as the highest award in the engineering
profession, is presented each year for scientific or industrial achievement
in any field of pure or applied science. It was established in 1902 as a
memorial to the great engineer whose name it bears. Past recipients include
Alexander Graham Bell (1907), Thomas Edison (1908), Alfred Nobel (1910),
Orville Wright (1920) and Guglielmo Marconi (1923).

Johnson is an IEEE Fellow and electrical engineer who, as the former dean
of engineering at Duke University, increased the engineering faculty by 50
percent, tripled the size of the teaching and research facilities, and
tripled the number of women engineering faculty, many in leadership
positions. She co-founded the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute for
Excellence in Optoelectronics and started several companies that are
commercially successful in color projection devices and intellectual
property licensing.

Activities for student women's group

2008-04-18T15:14:53Z

After one term in my current program, I seem to have become one of the two officers (one grad, one undergrad) of our WICS (Women In Computer Science, an ACM-W student affiliate) group for next school year. Right now, the group is not that active. It holds occasional social and faculty speaking events, helps students select classes for upcoming terms, occasionally brings alumni in to talk about their careers, and offers tutoring for women in the intro course for computer science majors (tutoring for this course is also offered by other entities, such as the Academic Resource Center). I have some ideas for activities/services that the group could do, and want to get feedback (and possibly other ideas). I would appreciate any thoughts you have.

Note that there are not many people in this group, and I have to keep that constraint in mind.

- Instead of offering tutoring for the intro class (since other people do that too), have more experienced students register in a database as qualified to tutor various computer science classes and available for one-on-one tutoring, so that students who need tutoring can search for tutors in the relevant subject.

- Outreach to pre-college students, such as working on CS projects with or offering CS tutoring to Girl Scout troops.

- Events to inform freshman women about the CS program and encourage them to consider CS as a major. One weird, possibly unique feature of this department is that we've got a kind of inverted pipeline - most of the tenured faculty are women, plenty of junior faculty are, a decent number of grads are, and then few undergrads are. So it seems reasonable to try to get more undergrads in.

- Perhaps a sort of informal support group for women in the intro class? As I said, the need for tutoring in this class is fulfilled by other campus entities. But the reason that the group offered it for this class in particular is that the class tends to turn the women who were considering CS, off of it, according to last year's officers (having not gone to this school as an undergrad, I don't know why the women are turned off by the class).

- Mentor/mentee program for new woman CS majors, where they are paired with upperclasswomen or woman grad students in CS.

Mechanical Engineer Wanted--Product Development

2008-04-08T01:10:03Z

I'm not sure how many people are looking for work right now, but my company is accepting resumes for a product development position.

A bit about the job:

You will be expected to carry projects from conception to completion. From first sketches to detailed design to documentation to facilitating manufacturing. Not all phases are present in all projects.

You will need to be comfortable communicating with clients, vendors, and coworkers.

Experience with consumer product development is ideal--especially in areas like electronics packaging.

We are looking for individuals with from 3-10 years of experience and consider advanced degrees as experience.

We value individual skill sets and interests beyond straight engineering coursework.

A bit about us:

We are small and rapidly growing company in Huntsville, Alabama. We provide engineering and design services on a consulting basis. Projects range from small electronics enclosures to large flat bed printers and a helicopter simulator. Clients range from government contractors to individual innovators.

We have machining and rapid prototyping facilities in house. We run Solid Edge (Version 20) for our CADing needs and use both FemPro and Algor as analysis tools.

You can check out our company website at http://inergi.com

A bit about the area:

Huntsville is a growing area with a population of about 150,000-200,000. Cost of living is (comparatively) low and the area is rich in technology opportunities. A large proportion of the population is employed as engineers, so salaries are competitive.

For extensive data (and charts!) check out this website: http://www.city-data.com/city/Huntsville-Alabama.html

Want more information?

I have been working for Inergi for 1 year now and I really love it. I am happy to answer any questions you may have about the company, the position, or the area. Either respond here or email me at mrsdragonswares AT gmail DOT com. If you are interested in applying, just email me and I will give you the name and contact info of the person you will need to send it to.

(Cross posted to various engineering communities. Apologies if you are seeing it more than once.)

Three-part question

2008-03-20T15:09:38Z

First off, welcome to all the new members! I've been terribly lax in responding to intro posts but I'll try to do better, now that the madness of grad school application season has subsided.

My question is threefold:

1) If you took time off between undergrad and grad school to work, did you find it a difficult transition back to school? Fortunately I found a solution to the two-body problem - my soon-to-be husband works as a process engineer for U.S. Steel and I will be starting a Ph.D. in bioengineering at Notre Dame. Now that I'm admitted, though, I'm starting to feel anxious about returning to school, especially with the intensity of graduate classes. My job has not been that challenging and I worry about all the things I've already forgotten. Is there anything I can do to mentally prepare myself?

2) If you are married or living with your SO, and he has an intense job as well, how do you cope? Like most new engineers at his plant, FI is expected to work 9-10 hour days with an hour's commute each way. Right now he is having a hard time adjusting and it is leaving him pretty drained at the end of the day. I anticipate a similarly challenging schedule, between coursework, hours in the lab, and TA duties. How do you share responsibilities for household work, and how do you make time for each other?

3) If you're a current grad student, do you take part in any mentoring activities, and how does your advisor feel about it? I was really active in SWE as an undergrad and Notre Dame has a "women in engineering" program that I'd like to volunteer with. However, I've heard that advisors often don't take kindly to any activity that could be seen as a "distraction" from your research work. Naturally, I don't want to overextend myself either. Any thoughts?

Thanks for any comments or advice you can provide!

the Lady and the Li-ion

2008-03-13T07:28:54Z

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6008

Feature article in the latest IEEE Spectrum about Christina Lampe-Onnerud.

"Only the initial capacity of batteries has been increasing, at about 5 percent a year. Today they are commodity products, manufactured in huge quantities and sold at vanishingly slim profit margins.

Change, however, is about to come. And it’s going to come from a pretty surprising agent: a 40‑year-old jazz singer, soccer mom, and research chemist named Christina Lampe-Onnerud."

Interesting stuff. Plus if you want to know the latest and greatest in li-ion batteries.

Materials Girl...

2008-03-12T20:07:56Z

Name: Rachel
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
School: University of Cincinnati
Degrees Obtained: BS in Materials Engineering in ~3 months
Major(s): Materials Engineering
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: metallurgical classes
Employment status: To start my job in June at BAE Systems as a survivability engineer
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: Graduate, then TBD
What would you like to get out of joining this community? Meet other female engineers and network

If you want to learn more about what in the world materials engineering is, please ask! I love talking about it! Also, any SWE girls out there? I was president of UC's chapter 2006-2007.

hello party people!!

2008-03-11T06:07:50Z

Name: Laura
Location: Glendale, CA
School: Pasadena Community College
Degrees Obtained: AA - general one
Major(s): Mechanical Engineering
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: calculus has been interesting. just started physics, kinda excited about that.
Employment status: working! at Tetra Tech, and engineering company. and as amazing as that sounds. i work in the billing department, NOTHING to do with the engineers. BUT! if anyone is looking for a job we are world wide always hiring.
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals:
    short term - transfer and finish my degree
    long term - get my PHD work for JPL (not sure how realistic those are, but we'll see!)
What would you like to get out of joining this community?
    see what its like for other women in such a male dominated work place. make new friends. just connect with other awesome nerdy girls like     me!

New Member

2008-03-11T00:49:59Z

Name: Emily
Location: Hamilton, Ontario
School: McMaster University
Degrees Obtained: Bachelor of Engineering (in my 4th/last year)
Major(s): ECE baby!
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: power generation/distribution
Employment status: employed...lol, but as a waitress (i'm still in school)...worked a co-op job last summer at Shaw Stone & Webster though
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals:

short term = finishing off my electrical engineering degree

longterm = getting involved in power....i'd like to work in the private industry and I'm really interested in nuclear plant design....i also would like to work as an on-site engineer (i'd get to see the plant built and start up and I'd get to travel to many different locations)....super long term goals would involve me becoming a lead engineer on projects

What would you like to get out of joining this community?

to meet other chicks in engineering and to see how they're handling school and work.

Exceptional departments

2008-02-22T21:44:02Z

Does anyone else know of engineering departments that do an exceptional job, by field standards, at attracting and retaining women?

I seem to have landed in one such department for my post-bac (hopefully a master's, someday!) - the Computer Science department in the School of Engineering at Tufts. 44% of the faculty, including 75% of the full professors, are women. 25% of the degree-seeking grad students are women, which is still pretty good by field standards, but it was the faculty numbers that really blew me away. If you know anything about the numbers of women in CS, you know that's astronomical.

I'm curious about other departments out there that have done a similarly good job at this...and what they are doing right that other departments in the field are not. I haven't been at Tufts long enough to get a sense of this, but maybe some of you have been at such departments for longer. Do you think that it's mainly a snowball effect - that the presence of a relatively high number of women attracts more women and makes the culture friendlier toward women, thus raising the numbers even further?

mobius strip

2008-02-19T21:52:12Z

If you know anything cool about a mobius strip, would you mind sharing? I just realized that I knew nothing about the mathematical properties of a mobius strip!

<IMG SRC="http://www.sciam.com/media/inline/D55BA3C5-E7F2-99DF-3B0A5A55D41B63FB_1.gif">

I might never work with a mobius strip, but still I'd like to know things like how pi is involved with this phenomenom and its trigonometric properties. Where it occurrs in nature.

Just joined....:-)

2008-02-18T18:21:06Z

Name: Laura M. Cruz
Location: Mayaguez, Puerto Rico (U.S.)
School: University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus
Degrees Obtained: (finishing this year) B.S. Computer Engineering
Major(s): Software Engineering
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: I really liked my Microprocessors 1 class....and i secretly love to code in 8086 assembly (^_^)
Employment status: Student / starting Full-time engineering in 2009
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: Short term I want to get more experience in the software engineering field, mainly in web-based programming. Long-term , I'd like to work in consulting and maybe even write about computer engineering (writing is my other passion).
What would you like to get out of joining this community? I'd love to meet other engineering chicks and discuss things we have in common.
Picture:

Opening a dead monitor....My cousin and I are reusing it for an art project. :-)

Discussion Topic

2008-02-18T12:27:57Z

I don't know how many people in here are regular readers of XKCD, but this hit home with me. So, up for discussion is today's comic.

Do you find that to be true in your experience? Do you ever feel like you (or the women around you, if you are male) are expected to represent all women? (For example: "Hey Sally, what do you think, as a woman?") Would/Do you consider that a good thing? A bad thing? Part of the territory? No big deal?

engineer_chicks @ 2008-02-17T23:12:00

2008-02-17T23:22:46Z

Hi, I just realised that I never got around to joining the community (and therefore posting an introduction), although I've been reading this community for ages. Better late than never. :)

Name: Kris
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
School: University of Sydney, Australia (undergrad), Univeristy of Western Sydney (Masters)
Degrees Obtained: BE (Mechatronics), BA (French Studies), Master of Fire Safety Engineering
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: I always liked the ones where I got to deisgn/build stuff best
Employment status: Full-time engineering
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: Get more experience in the real world (I've got about 5 years so far), and then maybe get into policy making.
What would you like to get out of joining this community? I don't get to interact with many other girls in the industry, so it is good to hear other points of view.

Engineer dating

2008-02-17T16:23:53Z

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been kind of neglecting this community. I've been so busy lately, but that's no excuse! :)

Since we're just coming down off the Valentine's Day festivities (for those of you who participate), I figured it was an appropriate time to ask about how we geeks go about navigating the dating pool. Hee hee. I guess I'll ask some questions to get the conversation started and then share my experiences.

1. In school, did you date within your engineering community, or did you prefer to date someone outside your realm of intellectual expertise? How about within your own major?
2. Answer #1 for what you observed with your classmates of the opposite sex.
3. Do you have any experiences dating coworkers (engineering or otherwise)? Good or bad idea? How did you keep your work and personal life separate?
4. If you have dated fellow engineers, what did you like/dislike about the experience? Did you ever have problems with competitiveness between each other?
5. If you haven't dated engineers, did you purposely avoid dating other engineers? If so, why?
6. And finally, do you think being an engineer gives you an advantage or disadvantage compared to other people in your dating pool? What unique qualities do you think engineers bring to the table when searching for a companion?

1. I dated in and out of my engineering community, but not within my own major. I ended up marrying a comp sci major (I'm an EE).
2. Most of the guys in engineering dated education and business majors! I always found this fascinating, since they treated the few women in engineering more as sisters than potential mates. I wish I knew why! Maybe it's because there were so few of us... I can count the number of inter-engineer relationships I saw in my class on one hand, and only one of those couples ended up getting married.
3. Since I got married to someone I met in college, I've never had the opportunity to date my coworkers. However, I do know of some coworkers who have dated. In general, I think it's a bad idea (even though my husband and I actually met at a work study job in school, that's different than dating as a professional, IMO). Odds are that it won't work out, and as you all know relationships don't always end nicely. I think maintaining a professional working relationship would be very difficult after a nasty breakup. :( I also have a friend who, after gaining a reputation for being very flirtatious to her coworkers, has simultaneously lost the respect of many of her peers. That is not a situation I would want to find myself in, so despite my friendly relationships with my closest coworkers, I make a conscious effort to avoid any hint of inpropriety.
4. I have dated fellow engineers (my husband!) and I enjoy having someone who shares some of the same technical/intellectual interests. We can talk about issues we're both working on and even if we can't understand EVERYTHING about each other's professions, we can at least appreciate the basics. In my situation, there has been some competition over salary levels, but since a lot of it depends on the market and individual company hiring practices, it's really not that big of a deal.
5. Before meeting my husband I did purposefully not date engineers within my own major to avoid some of the same problems I might experience with dating coworkers (awkward situations while having to work in close contact with an ex). I have to admit that compared to non-engineers I've dated, I much prefer someone who can appreciate the difficulties of obtaining an engineering degree and who can understand any conversation we have about work frustrations.
6. I think that, as a female engineer, I'm more logical/less emotional about relationships than other women. I tend not to play a lot of head games and be very direct about relationship expectations. I also think I have a better understanding of men and how they tick since I've spent the better part of a decade being around more men than women. However, I have run into some jealousy from non-engineer love interests concerning me being around engineering guys all the time. Such jealousy is unfounded but what can you do? :-P

engineer_chicks @ 2008-01-31T01:34:00

2008-01-31T06:34:29Z

Tonight in Chemistry class we learned about colloids. The book listed jello, milk, fog, foam, aerosol and porcelain as examples of colloids. I've been taking down a lot of vocabulary in my notes lately as i feel it is just as important to understand certain key terms in the definitions of science as it is to become familiar with the various formula and calculations of basic thermodynamics of chemistry. I have to say that I'm really not too happy with the formal definitions given in the back of the book. Would anyone be willing to help me come up with better definitions? Take the definitions of the three maind phases of matter below for example, the definitions lack brief descriptions of physical properties such as water's property of viscosity. I would like definitions that included properties such as that.

Colloid A state of matter intermediate between a solution and a suspension, in which solute particles are large enough to scatter light, but too small to settle out.

gas The phase of matter in which a substance has no definite shape and a volume defined only by the size of its container.

liquid The phase of matter in which a substance has no definite shape but a definite volume.

solid The phase of matter in which a substance has both definite shape and definite volume.

solution a homogenuos mixture

I would like a much more descriptive break down of what actually makes a solution a solution and a colloid a colloid as well. There are heterogenuos mixtures referred to as solutions in the real world. Yes I know what a solution is because I've studied them for at least three semesters, I am just unhappy with the wording of the definitions. I'm unhappy with the wordings because I feel that to truly show I have mastered the concepts of chemistry, I should be able to explain concepts to someone else interested in the subject that hasn't actually studied the topic in as much depth yet. What if I one day decided to teach the concepts of chemistry to others? It would be important for those potential students to truly understand all of the subject matter I was responsible for teaching them would it not? What if I wrote a report for a local news paper that dealt with the chemistry aspects of some engineering project which I expected the common man that doesn't know as much as I do about chemistry to read? That's exactly why I want to come up with better definitions to satisfy my communication desires.

Also, are there different classifications of colloids? I ask this because by the books explanations styrofoam would niether be a gas nor a solid if defined by its solutional makeup and yet we all associate phsyical aspects of a solid with styrofoam. Milk is also said to be a colloid and I'm assuming its a solid-liquid colloid, but is it actually a gas-liquid colloid? Milk displays physical properties of a liquid even though it is a colloid by solutional makeup. Classifying colloid's as states of matter via physical properties how exactly could I calculate significant thermodynamic enthalpy figures of the substance such as boiling point, melting point, critical point, heat of fusion, heat of fission, heat of sublimation and heat of vaporization? Do colloids have any special behaviors when it comes to phase changes or do they seperate out when temperature, pressure and volume change?

engineer_chicks @ 2008-01-22T23:12:00

2008-01-22T12:16:59Z

Name: jelbi
Location: Wollongong, Australia
School: University of Wollongong, Australia
Degrees Obtained: I have my HSC, but I'm currently going through a B. Engineering (Mechatronics)
Major(s): Mechatronics
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: hmm, I think so far I've enjoyed programming, and statics and dynamics (Surprisingly, as I struggled through that one!)
Employment status: Full-time student, working part time at a phone shop
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: Pretty much I want to graduate the use what I've learned to make a difference in someone's life.
What would you like to get out of joining this community? I just enjoy seeing how other girls are going in this field.

I joined a while ago...

2008-01-21T16:51:10Z

I joined this group a while ago, but I am just getting around to posting the introduction entry about myself.

Name: Miss McCready
Location: Rolla, Missouri, USA
School: Missouri University of Science and Technology
Degrees Obtained: High school diploma so far, working towards a B.S.
Major(s): Engineering Management
Favorite class/subject/engineering interest: Engineering Management and Psychology classes, and Design Teams
Employment status: Full-Time Student
Short-term and/or long-term education/professional goals: Short term is to get some internships and co-ops before I graduate. Long term is to someday become a Project Manager.
What would you like to get out of joining this community? Networking

Contributing to professional societies

2007-12-19T21:27:23Z

I'm a member of a couple of professional organizations - the IEEE and the AIAA. I'm also in a couple of the IEEE's technical societies (sub-organizations focused on a particular domain). I would like to get involved with the technical (or possibly public policy or educational) activities of these groups, but I'm not sure where to start.

The IEEE societies have all these different technical committees, which is where the technical activities happen. They claim that they are open to all members. But the people who are actually on these committees seem to have pretty hardcore credentials. I do not have such credentials. I have a bachelor's degree in a somewhat relevant field to one of the societies (computational intelligence) from a very prestigious university, and I've been working in the relevant fields for six months, as an engineer on one project and a supporting author on one grant proposal. As an undergrad, I worked on a research project relevant to one of the societies (computational intelligence; the project was in computational neuroscience). Those are my credentials. So, I'm not sure that I can get a foothold in these groups. What would they need or want me for?

The AIAA has spots on its technical committees for "young professional" members, which is a good sign. But "young professional" includes everyone under 35, which is going to include people with PhDs, people with 10+ years of experience...I'm still unlikely to get a spot, I would think.

So how does one go about getting involved in these, without having anything to point to that says "I'm awesome"? There are resources for volunteers who want to work with local teachers or whatever, but I think I'm actually good at working in committees (a skill honed with years of campus politics as an undergrad), better than I am at teaching.