Bangor Daily News Story
By Meg Haskell, BDN Staff
Posted Nov. 07, 2010, at 1:55 p.m.
Girl Scouts explore engineering choices at
UMaine
BDN
Rebecca Peterson, 11, of Girl Scout Troop 816 in Ellsworth solders the lead to a circuit board to
power a light emitting diode while participating in Saturday's engineering education event at the
University of Maine in Orono. A large group of Girl Scouts and their leaders from across the
state came to U Maine to take part in Transforming Leadership: Engineering for their Future.
(Bangor Daily News/John Clarke Russ)
BDN
University of Maine chemical and biological enginnerring double major Jennifer Skall, left, and
bilogical engineering major Katie Porter (in background) of Bangor supervise Brittany
Worcester, 15, of GIrl Scout Troop 67 in Winterport as Worcester uses a pipette to add sodium
citrate to a solution of gold nanoparticles in Saturday's engineering education event at the
University of Maine in Orono. A large group of Girl Scouts and their leaders from across the
state came to the University of Maine to take part in Transforming Leadership: Engineering for
their Future. (Bangor Daily News/John Clarke Russ)
BDN
Rosemary Smith, a professor of engineering, helps Sierra Kay of Girl Scout Troop 3063 in
Augusta solder the lead to a circuit board to power a light emitting diode while participating in
Saturday's engineering education event at the University of Maine in Orono. A large group of
Girl Scouts and their leaders from across the state came to U Maine to take part in Transforming
Leadership: Engineering for their Future. (Bangor Daily News/John Clarke Russ)
ORONO, Maine — Although she had never handled a soldering iron before, Samantha McEwen
mastered the technique quickly. She touched the slender, red-hot point of the iron to a thin strand
of lead solder, using the molten blob to bond the wire pins of a 4.7 ohm resistor to the copper
surface of the matchbook-sized circuit board on the bench before her.
McEwen, a sixth-grader at the Glenburn School, was in a group of young girls assembling
blinking LED lamps Saturday morning under the watchful eye of professor Rosemary Smith in
the electrical engineering laboratory at the University of Maine. The Barrows Hall lab was one
stop in a busy lineup of workshops for about 90 Girl Scouts from around the state who were
invited to the Orono campus to get some engineering experience and to learn more about a career
in engineering.
If girls are interested in medicine, the environment, energy production or other fields, said Dana
Humphrey, dean of the college of engineering, an engineering education is a powerful
investment. Robotic surgical devices and prosthetics, energy-generating wind turbines and woodbased biofuels are among the many advances de-veloped by engineers, Humphrey said in his
welcoming address to the Scouts.
“If you’re concerned about the problems of the world and want to solve those problems,
engineering is a really great career,” he said. “If you just want to complain about the problems,
there are lots of other careers where you can do that.”
The girls toured the engineering facilities at UMaine and took part in projects, learning more
about the different disciplines that come under the broad umbrella of the male-dominated
profession.
In the chemical engineering lab, they synthesized gold nanoparticles that can be used to help
identify and treat certain kinds of cancer. In the forest bioproducts facility, they used a hightemperature chemical reaction to produce acetone from wood fibers and seaweed. They rolled up
vertical tubes of paper and tested them for the greatest weight-to-strength ratio in the civil
engineering lab. They toured the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, where student
researchers develop products such as the lightweight concrete “bridge in a backpack” and
bulletproof coatings for military and law enforcement applications.
About 20 percent of engineering students at the University of Maine are women, Humphrey said.
“I’m not satisfied with that,” he said. The field offers many attractive options for women as well
as men, he said, including well-paid jobs in the public or private sectors, the opportunity to work
outside or indoors, flexible hours and the promise of solving important problems for individuals,
communities and the planet.
“We really need more women in engineering, because problems in society affect everyone but
solutions developed only by men may not be the best solutions for everyone,” he said. The
university actively recruits women for its engineering programs, he said, through school-based
programs and by working with groups such as the Girl Scouts to promote interest at an early age.
The university participates in the statewide Girls Engineer Maine, or GEM, program, to raise
awareness and aspiration among girls, he said.
For Samantha McEwen and the other Scouts participating on Saturday, the day was an
opportunity to explore. McEwen said she’s not at all sure that a career in engineering is for her,
but it might be.
“I like science best,” she said, carefully fitting an eight-pin integrated circuit into the circuit
board of her flasher. “I’m especially interested in robotics.”
The day of workshops concluded in the late afternoon.