UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA NEWS RELEASE – The College of Engineering will be hosting its first annual Girls in Engineering camp this summer. The week long camp, designed for girls ages 13-15, aims to encourage more area girls to consider engineering as a career path.
“We’ve had a few girls go through our camps in the past, and we saw a need for these girls to have a place of their own to realize that women can be successful in engineering,” said Elyse Bozsik, K-12 outreach coordinator for the college. The camp is designed to provide an introduction to a range of engineering disciplines through hands-on, interactive lessons such as bridge building, bottle rockets and chemical engineering experiments.
“We would like young girls to understand that science and engineering are professions that females can excel in, despite common stereotypes,” said Kelly Doyle, P.E., program coordinator for the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research and a camp instructor. “We also want them to understand that engineering can be fun and interactive while promoting problem solving skills.”
In addition to introductory engineering activities, the girls’ camp has a number of specially designed components. Female engineers, including College of Engineering faculty and graduate students as well as local professionals through the Society of Women Engineers, will provide the bulk of the instruction. Other events include a field trip to GE to visit women employed in prominent engineering roles and a career panel and mentoring luncheon where campers will be seated with professional engineers to provide one-on-one advice. “I was encouraged to become an engineer when I was young by a series or mentors, and I would like to encourage other young females to become engineers as well,” said Angelina Padilla, a lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department and a camp instructor.
The camp will be held on the University of Nevada, Reno campus from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., June 24 to 29. Registration fee is $250, and scholarships and financial aid are available. For complete registration details, please visit the engineering summer camps webpage. Contact Elyse Bozsik at [email protected] with questions.
Nevada’s land-grant university founded in 1874, the University of Nevada, Reno has an enrollment of 18,000 students and is ranked in the top tier of the nation’s best universities. Part of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the University has the system’s largest research program and is home to the state’s medical school. With outreach and education programs in all Nevada counties and with one of the nation’s largest study-abroad consortiums, the University extends across the state and around the world. For more information, visit www.unr.edu.
