The Virtual Development Center (VDC) site at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), now two years old, is directed by a faculty team led by Dr. Patricia Nava, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who has taught at UTEP for eight years. When she was first approached about launching a VDC site on the UTEP campus, Dr. Nava says she saw how the program could support a special interest of hers: encouraging women in engineering.”When I was an engineering student, I had many professors who were very resistant to the notion of women in engineering, and they actively discouraged me,” Nava says. “Later, when I became a teaching assistant, I saw so many talented women leave the program because they had been similarly discouraged. These young ladies were making excellent grades and would’ve been wonderful engineers. I believe losing these individuals was a loss to the engineering field, as well as the community.”
Nava saw how the VDC could help keep female engineering students in the pipeline by building camaraderie, skills, and a sense of belonging and by providing a sense of purpose through community involvement. She saw how she could be a role model for VDC students. And she made a strategic choice of a teaching assistant to help run the VDC.
Elvia Martin Del Campo, 26, grew up in Ciudad Juarez, just across the Mexican border from El Paso. For four years as an undergraduate student, Elvia had to cross the border to UTEP every day. That entailed getting a ride (from her mother or whomever was available) or riding a Mexican bus to the border, crossing on foot, then catching a US bus on the other side. The complicated commute ended at UTEP, only to be repeated going back home. Although time consuming, she felt it was entirely worth the effort.
“When I was about to graduate from high school and said I wanted to go to UTEP to try electrical engineering, everyone asked, .”Are you crazy?” They said, “Why not go to the University of Juarez, speak your native language, and study communications?” Martin Del Campo says. But she wanted to push herself, and at UTEP that meant, among other things, memorizing math terminology in English in order to take precalculus her first semester.
It also meant smashing stereotypes that some professors held about Latina students in engineering.
“I had doubts about my abilities at first, and I didn’t realize that I could go to a professor’s office for help,” she says. “So with a few other students, mostly female, I finally went to the precalculus professor with my questions about lab exercises and homework assignments. He said to me, ‘What are you doing here at UTEP?’ I said, “Trying electrical engineering.” And he said, “You’re never going to make it. Engineering and math are not for you. Go back to what you were doing before.”
I’m the type of person who, if I’m told I cannot achieve something, will try that much harder,. Martin Del Campo says. “That professor gave all of us an F in the class, but later I tested out of the class and went directly to calculus, where I got a B and did fine.” She says she believes stereotypes were at work in this encounter, as the group was comprised mostly of girls.girls whose English was not perfect.and they did not look or sound like what this professor thought future engineers should look and sound like.
In 1999, Martin Del Campo married and moved to El Paso and finished her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Nava’s offer of a teaching assistantship helped cement her decision to pursue a master’s degree in computer engineering, which she will complete in August. Working in the VDC program for the past two years, she says, has confirmed something she has believed all along: Technology is for everyone.
“The most important point that is made through the VDC is that it’s not only elite people in science and engineering who get to invent things. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in technology,” Martin Del Campo says. “Most people believe that in order to study engineering or science, you have to be a nerd, you have to love math. But when I encourage people to follow their interests in science and technology, I tell them, “You don’t have to like math, you just have to understand it. And anyone can understand it.”
Nava and Martin Del Campo teach a two-semester course that requires VDC teams to choose a project, then design and create a prototype. The 2002-2003 team created a “voice-activated spell checking pen” that allows a user to view the correct spelling of a word spoken into its miniature microphone. The 2003-2004 team researched and developed a fingerprint identification system of blood donors for United Blood Services of El Paso that could be adopted by the entire UBS network across two states. The course also prepares the team for their end-of-year project reporting at the annual VDC Conference.
The experience that the team members get by developing their projects is unlike any other experience in undergraduate engineering classes,. Martin Del Campo says. “And the exposure they get at the conference is wonderful. It helps them learn to value what they know and what they’re doing.”