SWE-EETY

On the week of September 3rd-6th Cal Poly SWE volunteers visited nine high schools across California to share their passion for engineering with students from their old high schools for SWE-EETY. SWE-EETY stands for Society of Women Engineers Expanding Engineering to Youth. At this annual event, Cal Poly SWE students went back to their former high schools to talk about Cal Poly, engineering, SWE, and led a lab activity. This event gives Cal Poly students an opportunity to encourage more students from their high schools to pursue engineering and lets underrepresented students know that there is a support system for them at Cal Poly. SWE-EETY was sponsored by Lockheed Martin and a few of the volunteers were actually paired with a Lockheed Martin employee who talked about their industry experience and helped with the presentation. During the presentation the volunteers talked about themselves, all of the different types of engineering, why diversity in engineering is important, what SWE is, and led the class in a lab activity. This year, the lab activity was a satellite building lab. Students were put in groups and given paper cups, masking tape, paperclips, index cards, fishing line, and a marble. Groups had to collaborate and construct a paper cup satellite that would slide down the fishing line on a paperclip and be able to release the marble at the right time so it would hit a target on the ground. After building, the volunteers would test the satellites to see whose marble could hit closest to the target. In total, we were able to reach out to almost 500 students. At the end of each classroom visit, students left with a significantly better understanding of engineering and more interest in engineering careers than they did before.