A University of Toledo professor’s brush with death as a teenager growing up in Africa inspired her to become an electrical engineer, while a Chicago-area railroad officer’s childhood curiosity about how machines worked led her to a career in communications and signals.
They and others told their stories Saturday during a panel discussion during the in-person return of Imagination Station’s annual “Girl Power!” STEM career day, designed to promote science, technology, engineering, and math interests among girls in grades three through eight.
The event had gone totally virtual last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, and for its return, Amy Mohr, the downtown science museum’s senior information officer, wanted to make it as accessible as possible.
“It’s called ‘Girl Power,’ but really we’re all about inspiring any young kid who wants to explore STEM education,” Ms. Mohr said. “We have a wider audience this year.”
LaShelle Pearson, a signals and communications officer for the Canadian National Railway, said she knew she wanted to become an engineer since she was 5 years old.
“I was one of those children that actually tore my bike apart, because I always wanted to make it ride smoother, thinking I could make it go faster,” Ms. Pearson said.
She then laughed while recalling how she completely dismantled her father’s new lawn mower as a kid to study its engine — something Dad never knew about until she confessed last year.
The story Ngalula Sandrine Mubenga, an assistant professor in the University of Toledo’s engineering technology department, told was a little harder to hear.
She nearly died at age 17 because she was sick enough to need surgery, but there was no electricity where she lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her family had to search for fuel to run a diesel generator for three days to allow the surgery.
That’s when Ms. Mubenga decided to become an electrical engineer — to provide electricity to rural areas like that so no one else would die from a lack of electricity.
Other panelists included Amanda Bryant, commercialization manager at Danfoss; Marquisa Horton, director of technical operations and construction at Buckeye Broadband; Rachel Momenee, a senior urban planner at The Collaborative; Jennifer Beal, an analytical chemist at First Solar, and Lee Ann Tyrell, a risk analyst at Columbia Gas.
The panel followed keynote speeches from Sharyl Close, a Toledo Fire & Rescue Department battalion chief, and Dr. Joan Duggan, an infectious-disease specialist at ProMedica and the University of Toledo Medical Center, formerly the Medical College of Ohio Hospital.
Toledo Fire Chief Allison Armstrong also addressed the children via video link.
Aside from panelists and speakers, the event included a variety of booths and stations for kids to explore different scientific principles through crafts and experiments. One booth by the Sylvania STEM Center, led by students from Sylvania High School, helped children create and launch paper rockets.
“We have our rockets that the kids can launch, and they get to see how much fun they can have with some of our stuff,” said Srestha Chattopadhyay, a sophomore on the robotics team who was manning the booth. “Just seeing the kids’ expressions when they see their rocket fly off, that really is the best part.”
After both the keynote speeches and during the panel, children in the audience asked broad scopes of questions that included whether the speakers had ever been told they couldn’t pursue a career in a STEM field.
Dr. Duggan said that almost every woman in medicine has been told she couldn’t choose that career.
“My suggestion is, just ignore it and press on with what you want to do,” she said.
Ms. Close said that when she first started as a firefighter, one of her male coworkers told her she’d never be allowed to ride on a fire engine as a woman. She later found out that 17 other women were already working on the trucks and going into fires at that time.
Ms. Close began what has become a 30-year fire department career at age 23 and has steadily climbed the ranks to lieutenant, captain, and battalion chief since then.
Ms. Pearson said she’s always experienced her own doubts as a woman of color — sometimes she still walks into rooms at work where she’s the only woman, or the only person of color.
Ms. Mubenga faced more outside discouragement. In high school, people told her she could never be an engineer as a woman — getting married and having kids would send her career down the drain. Ms. Mubenga lived to prove them wrong.
Gender roles and their constriction of women were a common topic during the panel discussion, but every speaker encouraged girls watching to pursue their own passions, regardless of what others thought.
“People will always try to put you in a box,” Mrs. Horton said. “They will always try to limit you by your education, by your gender, by race sometimes.… We’re here today so that we can break some ceilings, so we can kick down some walls, and we can become anything that we wanna be.”
First Published March 26, 2022, 10:02 p.m.
