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Transcript EP. 5: Can hands-on learning bring more women into STEM?

Gregory Washington��():

I’m Mason, president Gregory Washington welcoming you to Our Future, Transformed, a series of conversations with Mason's leading experts about solutions to the grand challenges of today and tomorrow. I'm with Nathalia Peixoto, associate professor of bioengineering at Mason, and a tireless advocate in the recruitment of women and those from disadvantaged backgrounds into tech and engineering fields. Welcome to the show.

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Thank you.

Gregory Washington��():

You grew up in Brazil, right? And at a very early age you announced to your family that you wanted to be an engineer and a teacher. What was their reaction?

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Um, yeah, that was very funny. For a long time I said that and my brother and my sister both laughed at me and said, no, you can't. You absolutely can't be an engineer, but you should be a teacher instead because you can't be two things. You gotta pick one and you can't pick engineering. It's like, okay. So it was, it was, um, tricky, uh, saying that I was going to be something that we had no role model for, right? So, um, our teachers were all women, um, and we knew no engineers were women, so, uh, it was nobody else. But I still, I still felt, felt very strongly I took apart a lot of things in the house. My mom was very mad at me all the time, and I was convinced that was a sign that I should be an engineer. So.

Gregory Washington��():

Uh, you were also a first-generation student, and so how do you think that affects, uh, the career choices, uh, for those students?

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Growing up, my mom had tried to go to college and left before her first year. She wanted to be an architect. Um, she never got to second year of college, and my grandma, I think left in eighth grade. So I remember talking to them, you know, what's, what, what is it that, that women do? And, and usually, um, women stay home and take care of the kids. Um, so all the women that I knew were, uh, doing that. I think this affects the choices of many people. So at Mason we have 50% first gen. I am the advisor of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers. And every time I talk to, um, a first-generation student, it is clear that we haven't transitioned to a more, to an education system where they understand what college is about. Um, last week I was talking to middle schoolers and they said, but I wanna start my own company.

Nathalia Peixoto��():

And I said, well, you can do engineering and minor in business. And they asked, what is a, what's minor, who's a minor? And so the words major and minor are not the kind of thing we teach in high school, which is understandable, but I think this is not to our benefit. Um, as a university, we wanna have as many bright students as we can. Um, and if they know that they can, for example, minor in business while majoring in engineering, we'll get more, more girls. So this was a girl asking me, what is a major and what is a minor?

Gregory Washington��():

So you've reached a certain status in your life and you are here in our bioengineering department in teaching and conducting research. Uh, do you feel as if you have reached your goal?

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Absolutely. I feel I never thought that I was gonna live in the United States, so this is a dream for any Brazilian. Um, but I, it wasn't my dream, so this is way beyond what I thought I was gonna reach. Um, of course, I'm an engineer and I'm a teacher. Um, and now it feels to me that being a mentor or getting to learn what first generation students are going through and being there for them, um, has been beyond my expectations. Absolutely.

Gregory Washington��():

Well, you're clearly investing time in our communities and, uh, talking to young people, and to young women about careers in science and tech and engineering. Is that how you pay forward or is there some other way?

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Um, I think there's, there's more, but one of the things that I've done in the past that, um, I feel it was a good, it was a good investment of my energy, was when my daughter was five, she wanted to be a Girl Scout. And we went to these Girl Scout meetings and they were not engineering, they were making crafts, not

Gregory Washington��():

Like cookies and crafts and stuff like that.

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Yes, baking cookies is not engineering for me or sewing things, so I could not handle that <laugh>. And instead I told her, why don't we offer an engineering badge? So Girl Scouts, you know, get badges for certain things that they do. So one problem was the girls were five, they didn't know how to read or write, so we designed an engineering badge that they brought, um, broken toys and we're gonna fix them. The idea was to reverse engineer the broken toys. And I brought, um, screwdrivers, uh, flat screwdrivers and Phillips screwdrivers, and they immediately understood what they were for. And we opened all those toys and looked inside and the girls were so take, they were so into this, like, oh, I found the brain, I found this brain of this toy. Can I take it apart? So by the end, we rarely fixed anything, but the girls were so, like, if this is engineering, that's what I wanna do.

Gregory Washington��():

I’m sold.

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Sold. So some of the parents were very mad at me because the girls went back home and wanted to take apart all, everything, even that worked. So including their cell phones and computers, they would always ask, can I take it apart? I'm an engineer, can I take it apart? And of course the parents were emailing me like, what did you do? But, um, but that was one of, I think, the best ways that I paid forward, you know, at that level of five-, six-year-olds. So if they are sold on how fun it is, um, I think we have a chance to get them, you know, at the college level, um, to come back and say, yes, that is what I want to do.

Gregory Washington��():

So these tropes, the tropes are that girls and women are either not just interested in engineering and tech careers, or they feel overwhelmed by the subject matter and decide on other career options. What do you think when you hear such things?

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Um, I think that's a pity. I think it's a huge loss. Um, I think women are interested. Um, it's a matter of, um,

Nathalia Peixoto��():

Um, offering a diversity in teaching. So we talk about diversity, we want more diversity, but we never talk about diversity on the teaching side. Usually our teaching is very, um, it's lecture based and everybody's sitting and have to write. Um, I can't sit still for a long time, and actually in eighth grade, I left home to go to a vocational technical school because I could take classes that were hands-on. I believe we should offer the same diversity in the college, at the college level. So I wish we had at least two tracks, a track that's more theoretical, a track that's more hands-on engineering, where not only we would teach them how to take it apart, but to put it back together following rules, and then we can teach electronics and then we can teach what the laws are, right? So …

Gregory Washington��():

But what is the one piece of advice you would give the students who are here listening to you today?

Nathalia Peixoto��():

I hope that the current college students will be great role models for the next generation. So when they have their cousins, uh, the little girls who say, what, what are you? And if you answer, I'm an engineer already, we're halfway there.

Gregory Washington��():

Outstanding. Outstanding. Thank you Professor Peixoto for your insight and effort. And thank all of you for joining us for Our Future, Transformed.