EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published in the November issue of GCU Magazine, which is available digitally here.
Photos by Ralph Freso
Three women donning Miller Classic welding helmets huddle over their metal cactus projects.
Sparks snap and spit and fly in brilliant showers from the welding shop in Grand Canyon University’s Engineering Building.
Then cheers erupt amid a furious flinging of high fives.
It isn’t something that often comes from the welding shop.
But the students, members of GCU’s Society of Women Engineers, have done something many of them never imagined: weld.
“We try and do it in a way that’s going to be inviting for the girls that haven’t been in the shops before while also being a challenge, so when they’re done with a project, they feel accomplished for doing something they didn’t think they could do,” said Raegan Crumbly, the chapter’s co-project engineer.
SWE isn’t the only way the College of Engineering and Technology supports female students.
It is hyper-focused on encouraging more women to pursue STEM careers.
Women earn only 24% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering and 21% in computer science, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project.
“Engineering and technology have traditionally been male-dominated, and while the gender gap is closing, there are still significantly less females in these industries. But we’re working on helping young women understand that they could be in these professions, and that it’s so critical for women to be in these professions,” said Dr. Pam Rowland, the college’s associate dean.
She points to not only the workforce gap but the importance of diverse viewpoints in problem-solving, which is vital in STEM careers.
Dr. Cori Araza, K12 Services and Solutions senior project director, has been connecting SWE and Women in Tech members with K-12 schools for events like Coding with My Girls, knowing the impact of students receiving mentoring from experienced peers close to their age.
Dropping into a recent Coding with My Girls workshop, it’s easy to hear the gears churning.
In one classroom, K-12 girls are programming lights to sync with a song using Arduinos on a breadboard.
Trevor Browne High School students Melody Montoya and Noemi Torres pick Radiohead’s “Karma Police”; SWE members stand by to help.
Another room buzzes as two dozen K-12 girls work in teams to build a recipe page using software development platform Replit before presenting their work to judges.
One team is going for it with a margherita pizza recipe. One 8-year-old? She’s cooking up a cinnamon roll page.
“You have an hour and 10 minutes to have this page looking amazing. You got this!” said senior software development major Savannah Krey, a Women in Tech student leader.
At GCU, she was the only girl – a senior girl – in her independent study computer science class of all freshmen boys.
It informs why she’s so hyped for events like Coding with My Girls and seeing girls cross into the STEM realm at younger ages than she was.
“I saw when I was in high school, and then moving forward into college, it was the same,” Krey said. “I am one of three girls in each of my classes (at GCU). I’ve been traveling with the same girls every class. We’re built-in friends. It’s only us.”
She said when she watches girls writing code who see the results of their coding on the screen say, “‘I DID that!’ That’s exactly how I feel about literally anything,” Krey said of how these events fuel her. “I’m trying to get people excited about STEM. I want other girls to be, too, because I think it’s so cool.”
A big part of SWE and Women in Technology events is building camaraderie, said cybersecurity sophomore Lilian Bauer, president of GCU’s Women in Tech.
Bauer had teacher mentors in high school who nudged her toward what she loves to do. “They showed me I didn’t have to suppress myself to fit into the box that’s given to women in this type of field.”
When she got to GCU, she said, “I wanted to be heavily involved in this club and these types of events so I could make friends and have that community and foster that for other girls in a way I didn’t have when I started out.”
At Coding with My Girls, Nazia Taylor, senior director of IT at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, spoke about a Honeywell internship program to encourage young people to go into STEM fields.
Of the 30-plus applicants this year, only one was female.
She has hope when she stops by events like Coding with My Girls and sees the passion in students like the ones in SWE and Women in Tech.
“When you let girls just be together, they figure out that they can do whatever they want. … With the girls over there,” Taylor said, scanning the room, “they’re not competing about how they look or what they’re doing. They’re literally working on a project together.”
Rowland worked in business then stayed home for nine years with her children before discovering computers when they began trickling into people’s homes. “I started just tinkering at it and learning” and went on to get her master’s and doctoral degrees in information systems.
When she taught at Dakota State University, she and a colleague noticed at commencement that only three women graduated with computer science degrees.
“We thought, what could we do?”
So they started CybHER to introduce K-12 girls to cybersecurity. Rowland brought the initiative here.
“We’re just starting the momentum around CybHER at GCU,” she said, and is excited about a fall event to help Girl Scouts earn their cyber patches.
SWE President Adrianna Ruby, who jumped from a Thursday elevator pitch training to Coding with My Girls on Saturday, said SWE is all about advocating for women in STEM and providing a safe space.
Although the biomedical engineering senior hasn’t experienced being the only woman in her classes, she knows other women who have, telling them, “You are so much more than what they say.” She’s doing what she does best: offers support.
