The Society of Women Engineers held their first official meeting Nov. 9. Aimed to expand women’s minds and express their creativity, the club is run by women, for women. Founders Anika Reddy and Miriam Fahmy created the club after they found themselves the only people left in the club Girls Who Code.
“When we were freshmen, we were the only two [freshmen girls] in the club Girls Who Code,” Reddy said. “We decided to take initiative into our own hands and create a safe space where women can express their stem minds and do whatever they want, while also having fun!”
Technology teacher Kimberly McRae is the sponsor for the Society of Women Engineers. Working for over a year to start the club, she believes that women need a space not dominated by males.
“Women sometimes lack confidence that they can do these types of careers, so, I think it’s great that we can create an opportunity for everyone to come together and just learn a little bit more about the field of engineering,” McRae said.
This student-made club is run by Reddy and Fahmy who assumed the roles of president and vice-president. The idea of establishing this society sparked from a lack of female peers in engineering based classes.
“Out of 30 students, four of them were girls,” Reddy said. “We were kind of intimidated, so we made our own club.”
The club’s first ever project included creating prosthetic Barbie arms in honor of Biomedical Engineering Month. Teamwork encouraged, the members worked on the designs in Tinkercad.
The second meeting on Nov 30 consisted of science chair Erin Horan teaching the members how to utilize the 3D printers to print the Tinkercad designs and printing the Barbie prosthetics themselves. Along with this, the members learned about the variety of careers that open up when they become interested in 3D printing and design.
“I’m really into science stuff and engineering especially,” Olivia Parent said. “I want to be a vet when I’m older so getting into clubs with science and taking science electives is very important to me.”
Engineering is an extremely male dominated career path. According to the 2018 United States Census Bureau, only 17.8% of chemical engineers are female. The Society of Female Engineers aims to uplift the marginalized group of females in engineering fields.
“They [female engineers] are so underappreciated,” Fahmy said. “Speaking from personal experience, whenever we were in computer science principles last year, there was only us and maybe two other girls.”
