Socially awkward and unattractive? My experience as an engineer at Cornell will defy your stereotype.
Women in STEM nowadays face a lot of challenges, as they are usually discouraged from pursuing careers in STEM due to social norms and gender stereotypes, in addition to the already rigorous curriculum and work environment. As a young woman who studies engineering myself, I consider it is important to inspire younger generations to study STEM, as well as empowering women in STEM in industries and institutions.
What is it like to study Engineering at Cornell University?
Cornell’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department has the steepest male to female ratio for its undergraduate education among the whole engineering school. My coursework not only teaches me the principles of how things operate but also gives me the opportunity to solve problems and tackle challenges. We have access to a lot of cutting-edge technologies, allowing us to build trending devices and applications. For example, in the past semester, I was able to develop a music recognition app that inputs a piece of real-time music and outputs the name of the music.
At Cornell, I am also exposed to a lot of opportunities to apply what I learned in a real-world setting. With my computer engineering education and skills, I am able to work with different colleges and be on different projects. Currently, my projects are involved with College of Agriculture and Life science, College of Arts and Science, and of course, College of Engineering. The multidisciplinary projects I have allows me to explore different fields and sharpen my technical skills in different contexts. The way of thinking and the hands-on technical ability from engineering education is applicable across many areas, and that is why I think engineering is one of the most useful and applicable fields to study across all majors.
Is studying engineering difficult?
However, with all that being said, studying engineering is not easy, as it has to prepare us to technical skills to face industrial challenges. There are late nights to work on programming the electric board, frustrations on not able to run the code, problem sets that you just do not understand, and the exhaustion from dragging your body from project lab back home at 1 am in the morning. With all the rigor of engineering curriculum, I have never regretted my choice of being an engineer. These experiences make me and friends closely tied together, and build a support network that will be there to help each other out. A lot of the people I have done projects with has become my closest friends, and that bound has to give special thanks to the challenging projects we have in engineering.
What are the common stereotypes about women in STEM?
Despite the feminism movements and popularity of STEM, women in STEM are generally underrepresented and often discouraged. There is some common misconception of girls studying STEM, which are mostly untrue. We are pictured as a group of socially-awkward and unattractive women and yet are never as good as our male counterparts in our field. It is interesting to study how these misconceptions come about, and not surprisingly, it takes roots the fact that these fields were predominately male occupied. From my personal experience, on campus, most team leads for engineering projects are taken by men, while women generally do not take leadership roles, or take lead in business or other non-tech area. With these misconceptions discouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM, in addition to the typical gender expectations for the “domestic” women, STEM fields are losing a lot of talents and valuable perspectives.
With the collaborative effort from different organizations and institution policies, the gender imbalance is getting better, as more young women entering the field of STEM. On campus, I am involved in many women in tech group to inspire and empower women, and to create a warming community around women in STEM. A lot of our projects include mentoring high school students and college freshmen, social among women in tech majors, professional internship panel to build career networks and more. To encourage more women to choose majors in STEM, we really take a lot of efforts and reach out to younger generations to show how awesome STEM is.
Why do you like your major?
As an electrical and computer engineering student, I enjoy my major because of its wide applications in various aspects of the world, its broad range of topics that I can explore, and its applicable projects to solve pressing issues. My coursework ranges from electrical circuitry, electricity, to plasma physics, nuclear reactions, to computer architecture, and computer programming. Being in ECE allows me to do whatever I want with my major and opens me up to many career opportunities. The different areas of ECE break down the world and show me piece by piece how all electronics and digital networks are integrated together. Starting from the charged ions and electrons, building up charge carrying wires, and together they form circuit boards. The circuit boards can then be programmed for and by computers, which then makes the whole digital world possible. Seeing the world through an ECE view, I am able to answer my childhood questions of how the world come together by understanding the structures of subatomic particles building up the ubiquitous internet networks.
My knowledge in ECE allows me to do statistical analysis, work on engineering physics, code complex genetic algorithms of evolution, manage and update program websites, make autonomous robots, navigate satellite orbits, and so much more. I think ECE’s depth and breadth of topics gives a comprehensive view of my future potentials and lays a foundation for me to do whatever I want with my career. I truly appreciate Cornell for giving me such valuable education.
Siming is a content creator Mascot. She studies Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University.
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