On Thursday September 28th, three Kent School girls went to UCONN’s Women in Engineering Day. This is the third year UCONN has held this event, but it is the first year Kent has ever sent representatives to the seminar.

The day started an alumni panel of women who graduated UCONN with various engineering degrees discussing how they got into engineering, what their UCONN experience was like, and what their current job is like.

Next students heard a panel of current female UCONN undergraduate students who are pursuing a degree in engineering. Both panels were asked questions by the audience that ranged from their internships to what their general favorite part about UCONN was.

After the panel discussion, students were taken on tours of some of UCONN’s engineering facilities. They were shown the department of engineering as well as labs and some demos. With their tour guides the students were able to eat lunch in one of UCONN’s dining halls and were able to have an open discussion about engineering with the other girls in attendance of the program and the current students.

Dr. Nadire took the three Kent students to UCONN’s Storrs campus because he hoped the girls “were encouraged to have a broader understanding that engineering isn’t just robotics and such, and that engineering schools are really excited and want women to apply.”

He said that the message is much louder and he wanted the students to hear the message and hopefully apply to engineering schools later on. In the engineering field females are the minority and the purpose of the event at UCONN was to show that it is possible for a girl to be in the field and most importantly succeed in the field.