Returning for the fifth year, The University of Toledo College of Engineering’s award-winning Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day will welcome 750 seventh and eighth grade girls to campus.

Traditionally a one-day event during National Engineers Week, this year organizers switched it to three days to better manage the growth in 2022 and inspire the next generation of women in engineering.

Media are invited for a photo op between 10:30 a.m. and noon on Thursday, Feb. 24, Wednesday, March 9, and Tuesday, March 22, on the first floor hallway of Nitschke Hall. The event is closed to the public.

Girls will work with women engineers from local companies and engineering students on a variety of hands-on activities to better understand water treatment, transportation network designs, basic coding and programming, structural design principles, mechanics of propulsion, genetic engineering and cyber security.

UToledo’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day has twice won the National Women in Engineering Action Committee’s Girls Day Event of the Year award.

Since the program began, more than 2,500 girls from 32 school districts across northern Ohio have participated in the event at UToledo along with more than 30 companies, 10 student organizations and individuals from multiple professional leadership groups throughout the region.

Studies have found that girls tend to lose confidence in math and science and lose interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in early adolescence, so the event targets girls in middle school and connects them with role models.

“By creating programs that show individuals that they are not alone in their interest in science and technology, while also giving them examples of individuals who have succeeded in their own careers in the industry, we believe we can help reinforce that interest in the STEM fields during a stage in their lives that studies have shown it to wane,” said Bryan Bosch, manager of diversity, inclusion and community engagement initiatives in the UToledo College of Engineering.

“Our goal is to create an environment where we can build interest in the field for any young person, while developing programs that can nurture and grow that interest into a career for anyone.”