CU helps CURIE-ous high school girls explore engineering careers

By Bill Steele

Balancing the benefits of new technology with its hazards was the challenge presented last week to a group of 40 young women attending Cornell's annual CURIE Academy, a weeklong program designed to introduce high-school girls to engineering and encourage them to pursue engineering careers.

In Carpenter Engineering Library's computing lab are eight of the 42 young women who spent last week on campus learning about engineering as part of CU's CURIE Academy. Half of the high schoolers say they plan to apply to Cornell. Bill Steele/Cornell News Service

The program includes introductory lectures on various fields of engineering and some hands-on laboratory experience, but centers around a design project where students learn to work as a team and to deal with the kinds of challenges -- from technical to political -- real engineers face.

This year, the goal was to design a consumer product taking advantage of modern communications technology, but to keep in mind the privacy and other issues that might be involved. The good news, they were told, is modern technology puts a vast amount of information at your fingertips. The bad news, they heard, is that modern technology puts a vast amount of information about you at the fingertips of others.

Projects developed by the teams included running shoes with GPS capability, a digital camera that transmits pictures to a processing plant for printing, clothing that heats or cools the wearer, a closet that monitors weather and tells you what to wear, an online shopping system that allows you to see yourself in a mirror wearing clothes you're thinking of buying, and an implantable device that delivers medication directly into the bloodstream, while reporting your condition to your doctor.

At the end of the week, each team was required to present its project to a panel of people playing the roles of venture capitalist, civil rights activist, law-enforcement officer and "techie," questioning the project from different viewpoints.

The CURIE (which officially stands for Cornell University Research in Engineering) program, now in its seventh year, draws young women from high schools all over the United States. This year 107 applied for 42 openings. All have in common an intense interest in math and science, and high academic standing. While some have come from specialized science high schools or private schools, most have come from public schools.

The program is sponsored by Women's Programs in Engineering and the Office of Engineering Minority Programs.