Making Engineers (M.E)

 M.E. is working to solve the problem of declining drop-out rates within STEM education among females. As an organization rooted in the south, one of the poorest regions of the United States, as well as an area where women are historically discriminated against and even more so for racial minorities, it is important to support girls with resources for STEM that they would not otherwise have. In the region of Pensacola and extended area within the west panhandle of Florida, there is a positive trend of girls dropping out of STEM by middle school from limited STEM resources in Northwest Florida public schools and criticism by boys.

The scale of the problem extends to all girls or anyone who identifies as a girl who is also in middle school. Being entirely free, Making Engineers has been currently set up in one location, Pensacola, but has received program participation from girls in neighboring cities and counties, including the state of Alabama. In total, over 70 girls within middles school have been reached by coming to one or more of our in person meetings or days of our summer camp. 

To decrease successive drop out rates in STEM, our solution teaches broadly about the public school standards in Florida related to STEM but takes the unique approach of centering all teaching hands-on learning, and projects around engineering. In Florida public schools, students do not have the opportunity to specialize in engineering classes and rather fulfill science and math classes as their STEM required learning. Out of all job occupations in STEM, women pursue engineering after college the least. The U.S. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published, in 2019, that less than 20% of women hold engineering occupations. our organization believes that this is due to a lack of exposure to engineering. Although engineering takes focus and precision, a skill that is hard to develop in young children, middle school girls are perfect to learn engineering since they have had basic exposure to all the fundamental math and science principles as well as basic information about coding technologies by the end of 5th grade in most Florida public schools. In addition to using engineering projects, Making Engineers dedicates lessons to over 20 different engineering fields and invites females from local or national engineering firms to come and speak as well as help the middle school girls learn about their engineering fields. Making Engineers believes that exposure to engineering and its versatility are the best way for middle schoolers to learn whether or not they enjoy engineering, which engineering field they may want to pursue, and whether they enjoy other STEM concepts that are within engineering if they dislike engineering as a potential career field to pursue in undergraduate years.  

In Florida public schools, students do not have the opportunity to specialize in engineering classes and rather fulfill science and math classes as their STEM required learning. Out of all job occupations in STEM, women pursue engineering after college the least. The U.S. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published, in 2019, that less than 20% of women hold engineering occupations. our organization believes that this is due to a lack of exposure to engineering.

Making Engineers: M.E. centers as a service oriented organization that uses hands-on projects to teach engineering, integrate broad STEM concepts, and empower girls in STEM. During the school year, meetings are held two Saturdays a month at a local community space or high school library for three hours. In the summer, Making Engineers hosts a one week-long summer day camp. Meetings involve icebreakers/games for girls to socialize, a lesson for a specific engineering field as well as a guest female engineer in that field and a hands-on project, and finally a connection and reflection on how current engineering technologies and gender equity developments have caused the lives of engineers and females pursuing engineering to be more accessible and have changed. In this part of the meeting, historical female engineers are analyzed. Sometimes girls who have never been interested in engineering find the connection between women’s history and engineering a reason to return to Making Engineers in the future. 

With regards to the digital technologies we use. We use a wide variety of engineering technologies, depending upon the engineering field being covered. The technologies are not invented ourselves, but are repurposed in ways to address certain engineering problems. Such technologies include but are not limited to arduinos, robots, computers to block code or code in Java or run simulations, Adafruit hardware, circuit boards, and more. Problems being solved may center around the use of finding ways to use such digital technologies to complete a specific task. With using real world engineering technologies, we aim to expose middle school girls early to technologies that they can become digitally proficient and literate in using if they want to pursue engineering and therefore will not feel like they cannot be engineers because of the sophisticated technologies. 

While Making Engineers is open to any middle school female, the target population is underrepresented groups, particularly middle school girls of Title I status or historically underrepresented racial status. Many parents do not know how to support their children in STEM. Consequently, their children now have a place to go on the weekends and in the summer to learn about engineering. 

To understand their needs, Making Engineers has directly asked parents, middle school STEM teachers in the community, and the middle school girls themselves how they feel about STEM and engineering and what they want to learn. This has been in the forms of directly asking, observing, or sending surveys. Middle school girls are being engaged as we develop the solution by allowing them to give their feedback every few meetings on what they would like to get out of the program and how they want to feel about engineering. The solution addresses the needs of middle school girls by providing them with free hands-on engineering projects in over 20 different engineering fields, a connection to Florida STEM benchmarks with each project, and the opportunity to meet with and hear about stories from professional female engineers. 

Our approach of hands-on projects in a wide variety of engineering fields as well as lessons dedicated to female empowerment in STEM from historical women in engineering to guest speakers in engineering allows middle school girls to have access to engineering resources for free that they would not otherwise be able to find in the public school system. 

Our solution impacts the lives of middle school girls by giving them previously lacking confidence in STEM to pursue STEM fields in higher education or a new interest in STEM that they might have not otherwise discovered due to limited resources. 

The Team Lead was a student in the Northwest Florida Public School system where she participated in a wide variety of STEM extracurriculars at her school, she noticed how high school girls lacked confidence in their STEM project and thought about how to improve this in early education when girls are still interested in STEM, such as in middle school. The Team Lead also attended and spoke at annual middle school science teacher conferences where she was able to interact with middle school science teachers and hear the needs the teachers hoped would be met by their students. The Team Lead has been in close contact with professional female engineers who have been willing to speak about their experience as females in STEM and their engineering fields. In addition, the Team Lead has been connected to local engineering companies and national engineering companies through the National Academy of Engineering’s EngineerGirl Ambassador program. Consequently, more engineering firms have been willing to join our team, advertise our program to middle school girls they know, and sponsor high quality engineering resources for hands-on activities. 

Other members of our team are science teachers in high school and have talked about Making Engineers as a volunteer opportunity for high school girls to learn about STEM. Project coordinator, Karen Bruening, is an 8th year high school teacher at Pensacola High School and was the Teacher of the Year for 2023 for Pensacola High School, even making it to the Top 10 for Escambia County Teacher of the Year. She is an active participant in the Scientist in Every Florida Schools program, with access to professionals from all over the state of Florida, is partnered with the Powell Family Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel lab at the University of Florida, and has been selected as a Society for Science Advocate for the 2023-24 School year. 

As a whole, our team frequently interacts with students who have siblings in middle school or middle school teachers who then connect us with opportunities to reach middle school students. 

To see the impact of our needs, we survey parents of girls part of our program as well as the middle school girls themselves to see how we can improve our program. Many girls enjoy being able to interact with other girls that feel underrepresented in STEM, since they can socially connect in such situations. However, they always wish there were even more opportunities that Making Engineers could provide. This includes more meetings and engineering activities they can take home to do.

To address these ideas and input from parents and the middle school girls, Making Engineers has started planning and making agendas to grow the organization yearly by providing more STEM and engineering specific services and recruiting more girls. 

Making Engineers currently serves over 70 middle school girls - any girl who has attended one or more Saturday meetings or days of the summer camps - and reached 22 elementary girls with a one day Girl-Powered VEX Robotics Workshop. 

Making Engineers: M.E. is applying to this challenge because we face many technical and financial barriers. We have a small team and want to find better ways to recruit girls to our program by expanding the roles of our team. We believe that marketing training would be highly helpful for us, as an organization that does not operate on seeking profits it is often hard to find ways to market our organization in creative ways, since many grants we receive do not allow us to spend money on marketing materials. 

Technical barriers we face are not having enough knowledge about engineering as professional engineers themselves. While we spend hours before meetings trying to learn about and connect with engineers from different engineering fields, middle school girls in our program only learn about such fields in a short period of time. As a future project, Making Engineers wants to start a mentoring program for professional engineers to be paired with an individual middle school girl. This opportunity would broaden the technical knowledge and availability of resources to teach in depth about certain engineering fields over a long period of time that Making Engineers lacks. 

In addition, Making Engineers needs mentorship for our team to grow into a larger organization. We hope to initiate branches of our organization in other southern states that are facing the same challenges for middle school girls in STEM. Since no one in our team has had experience with business, marketing, or running an organization before Making Engineers it would be highly beneficial to receive training on how to smoothly operate our organization and expand it. 

With more funding, we would start up a middle school science fair mentoring program for middle school girls part of Making Engineers to come to separate meetings dedicated to science fair projects. 

Secondly, we hope to start an advising team for high school girls who have been a part of Making Engineers during middle school and want to pursue STEM in college. Since many girls in our program are of a lower income background, it is likely that many girls will not be able to afford a college STEM education due to a lack of scholarships. If our team receives training, we would be able to learn how to and to start this initiative. 

Grace Williams was selected as a 2021-2022 EngineerGirl Ambassador by the National Academy of Engineering her sophomore year in high school. This allowed her to grow a network of female engineers and receive STEM education and equity training as well as a grant to purchase supplies and start Making Engineers. 

As a student herself in the Northwest Florida Public School System, Grace frequently interacted with students of Title I status - children whose parents make below minimum wage and families could be considered in poverty - as well as a wide variety of races who identify as non-white. As a result, she learned about what resources her classmates lacked outside of school and turned this into a mission to educate more women in STEM with Making Engineers: M.E. 

Besides being a student, Grace has participated in STEM competitions that allowed her to meet local STEM teachers from other Title I schools besides her own. Grace has been invited as a guest speaker and has spoken at annual science teacher conferences to share her program as well as attended parts of conferences to learn more about the specific STEM needs of middle school STEM teachers. 

Making Engineers is a novel approach to bridging the gender gap in engineering education in our area. Middle school girls in our area do not generally have access to a space where they can freely participate in engineering-based activities. Only one middle school in Escambia County has a technology-based academy, and it is geared towards cybersecurity, not engineering. In neighboring Santa Rosa County, the middle schools have no advertised technology or engineering programs, though two schools do participate in BEST Robotics Competitions. Making Engineers provides interactive space for middle school girls in both counties to be with like-minded girls and to meet local engineering professionals and university and high school students specializing in engineering, most of whom are also female. They get to do hands-on activities and make life-long connections with both friends and mentors. Other groups could use the Making Engineers model to start programs in other counties or areas, providing education, support, and mentorship to even more girls in the field of engineering, where opportunities are so rare. One unique aspect of Making Engineers is that the leaders of the program are not teachers, but high school students. Teachers are in place as advisors, mentors, and materials acquisitions, but planning and activities are all managed by students. Another aspect that is unique for this group is that it draws participants from multiple counties, even from private schools and homeschool groups. This gives participants a chance to meet many different people from many different settings, and to learn that they all have a lot in common. Lastly, the group is currently funded with a Community Impact Grant from the Ascend Cares Foundation, not affiliated with the school. This allows for broader participation, and for a broader set of activities to be planned. 

In the coming year the impact of Making Engineers is expected to be an increase in the number of participants that we reach, and the inclusion of participants from private schools, homeschool groups, and virtual school students. An increase in advertising for Making Engineers in various media outlets will increase engagement with the community and will increase the number of participants. Public access radio and television programs will be a focus in the near future for summer camp, as well as possibly some pre-school planning visits to science teachers in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. 

The five year plan is to scale this up to hopefully have satellite groups in more counties in northwest Florida by the end of year 5. This could look like  meetings organized and operated by Making Engineers leaders, or it could be training programs operated by Making Engineers leaders for other groups to run their own programs, and will likely progress from the first example to the second example. Curriculum development for leadership and advertising, fundraising, and mentorship will all be necessary for this phase of the program to take off. 

The progress indicator that is currently being tracked is the headcount at the meetings. Recruitment location and school is also being tracked with surveys. Impact will be tracked with participants throughout high school and into college. For example, two of the first cohort of students have enrolled at Pensacola High School and were active in their freshman year in the Engineering Club. At least one of the current cohort of students will be attending Pensacola High School and is enrolled in the research class dedicated to the Engineering Club. More data will be collected with future surveys to see how many participants and volunteers choose to pursue engineering or other STEM fields in college. 

Our goals here correspond to UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” and its target 4.5, “By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations.” Many schools in both Santa Rosa and Escambia counties are Title 1 Schools, so many of the participants will fall in the category of disadvantaged youth. Other indices will be evaluated in future surveys.

The impact of Making Engineers in the short term will be more participants pursuing STEM topics in high school, because of the experiences they had in this program. By hosting the students all together, and letting them prove to themselves that they can be successful with STEM activities, students will feel more confident moving forward in their school careers, and it will provide them with the knowledge that they are not alone in being a female pursuing STEM education. They will have the confidence to enroll in the more difficult classes because they will know that they are ready for the challenge.

For the long term impacts, some of the students in the program will hopefully train as leaders for Making Engineers, and will continue the group until graduation. After graduation, participants will have the confidence to apply for challenging STEM college programs, and will have the confidence and strength to achieve success in these pursuits. 

These impacts can be evaluated as program participants move through the program into high school, possibly through leadership for the program itself or leadership in other STEM programs in high school, and as they move into college and careers. Making Engineers is young, and data for this is only beginning to be available to collect. Research by the American Society of Engineering Education (link here) suggests that one successful model for increasing the number of women who pursue engineering degrees is to make sure that any negative perceptions that they have of the engineering or other STEM programs is removed before they enter high school.

Anecdotal data exists from interviews conducted with last summer’s camp participants by local television station WEAR-TV3, which can be seen in a video located here where program creator and director Grace Williams was honored as an “Angel in our Midst” in July of 2022. Participants attested to the confidence that they gained in the course of one school year with only monthly meetings of Making Engineers.

Research shows that many girls develop negative perceptions of STEM professions and negative attitudes towards STEM education before middle school, and that the best way to recruit girls into STEM fields is to remove this barrier before they reach high school. By providing human equity into this program–effective volunteers, engaging activities, community buy-in in the form of local professionals in the classroom with the participants, and the safe space to be girls engaged in STEM activities together–all of these are research-backed methods to increase participation of girls in high school STEM activities and pursuit of higher education in STEM fields in the future. By also providing leadership training and opportunities within the Making Engineers organization, the high school student mentors will also be more likely to pursue STEM education and careers. Making Engineers will be pursuing partnership with our local SWE chapter to get involved with SWE’s student leadership program. We also have access to the Studer Community Institute training program for leadership development.

More traditionally, students will be learning about technical solutions to real world problems too, in the form of robotics, coding, engineering research using various scientific sensors and databases, and will be learning about public engagement through presentations and other interactive programs. 

Making Engineers is organized as a project at Pensacola High School, receiving funds that were donated for the project by the community through the Escambia County Public Schools Foundation, which is a 501(c)3 entity.

All staff are currently volunteers, there are two permanent volunteer staff, and various volunteers throughout the past two years.

Two years

As this Solution is provided with the goal to increase the participation of girls in Engineering and STEM education and occupations, Making Engineers is limited to girls. There are no other limitations on participants. The program has so far provided access to engineering activities for many races and ethnicities within our target population. The program is free to participants, to allow for all interested students to participate. Future plans include possible access to public transportation (city bus program) to be able to attend weekend meetings and summer camp. Making Engineers works hard to establish meeting norms to ensure that all participants are heard and interact with each other during the course of different projects and different meetings. Participants are encouraged to present solutions and findings to meeting problems/challenges, and audience behavior is discussed frequently. As leadership training is added, Making Engineers leaders will be able to keep the focus on the group being a safe space for girls to be engaged in STEM without hindering each other in any way, and with cooperation and support for each other. 

Making Engineers provides middle school girls the opportunity for training in STEM disciplines, mostly engineering, in an accepting and inclusive environment as a weekend club activity. Growth opportunities exist in leadership positions once they move into high school years. The local community is provided the opportunity to interact with participants and volunteers to establish outreach activities within their professional organizations. Local professionals are given a chance to impact future plans of young students, increasing the number of female STEM students, and by doing so, increasing the pool of future female applicants for their companies and other companies like them. Engineering professions will not achieve equity, diversity, and inclusion goals without increased encouragement of students throughout the education process, due to both active and passive discouragement by many in the upper reaches of the profession. Antiquated ideas that women do not have the mental capacity for difficult classes or that women cannot be mothers with families and still perform their job persist, and change will need to come from the youngest students if we hope to banish these attitudes.

Making Engineers has an organizational support business model, with funding for the activities being provided from a grant, and the social program, in this case the engineering training group, operating separately from the administration of the grant. The grant supplies materials for activities and meals for participants. The grant is an Ascend Cares Grant, from a local manufacturing company that used to be part of the 3M corporation. This comes with support from the corporation in the form of human equity–the engineer, Wendy Kramer, applied for the grant and will support us by attending all activities and planning meetings, and will interact with the participants and provide lessons. Other employees of Ascend are also invited to participate, interact with the participants, and provide lessons. As the program grows, we will need to add funding sources, if Ascend does not increase its grant to us. Ascend has indicated that it is willing to do more as we grow, but upper limits are as yet unexplored. The grant was received just two weeks ago.

Making Engineers received initial support from the EngineerGirl Ambassador program, an offering of the National Academy of Engineers. Program creator and director Grace Williams was awarded this honor in the 2021-22 school year. As an EngineerGirl Ambassador Grace received a small stipend and mentorship from EngineerGirl staff and mentors about how to run the program, key elements of successful programs, planning instruction, and interactions with younger students. 

During this initial year-long period, engineering professionals in the local area of Pensacola, Florida, provided monthly meeting support by volunteering to come give a lesson to the participants and providing their own materials for activities at their own request. The program was well received, and Grace was selected as an Angel in our Midst by our local television station, and a short segment was filmed during our summer camp in 2022. Prior to the launch of the summer camp, the local television station also did a short segment advertising the camp, from which we had engineers contact us to be able to participate. One was the only engineer employed by the World Wildlife Fund, who contacted us from Zambia to discuss his participation as he was coming home to Gulf Breeze, Florida, the week of the camp. The other was the Education Outreach Director of Florida Power and Light, who contacted us to provide lessons about her other passion, the octopus. Both STEM leaders had a great interaction with our participants. 

For year 2, participants requested two meetings per month and were accommodated most of the year. Wendy Kramer from Ascend was a program volunteer in January of 2023. She saw the value of the program and mentioned the Ascend Cares Community Impact Grant. Making Engineers worked with Ms. Kramer to complete the application, and it was awarded two weeks ago in the amount of $3500. The check has been received and deposited with the Escambia County Public Schools Foundation for administration of this year’s summer camp in July. 

Community support has been strong for Making Engineers, which should continue in future years and as the program grows. There is a strong presence of engineering firms and organizations in northwest Florida, including Society of American Military Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Florida Power and Light, and many others. Grants from these organizations for future growth are being explored. Program coordinator Karen Bruening is active in the local community and has contacts within many organizations as well as the University of West Florida and the University of Florida engineering departments. Karen is a respected teacher within Escambia County, and has contacts within neighboring Santa Rosa County as well. Karen was a Teacher of the Year for Pensacola High School for 2023, and was in the Top 10 for Escambia County. Basic inroads for program growth can be established easily in the future.