University of California at Berkeley
What makes an engineering student switch from saying, “I cannot wait to be done with my degree. to .I’m going for my Ph.D.”?
One student, Catherine Newman, is a 2003 mechanical engineering graduate of the University of California at Berkeley who has completed a year of graduate school. Newman, who will earn her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in mechanical design in 2007, says two things helped her commit to a Ph.D. program: defining engineering on her own terms and finding validation from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology’s Virtual Development Center (VDC).
“I constantly have ideas for inventions, usually things that come from needs in my own life, yet many times as an undergraduate I thought, ‘Why am I studying engineering?” Newman says. “The rewards of becoming a doctor or lawyer are well-defined but not so for engineers. “Nobody ever told me I could tailor my engineering studies to my dreams and my personality, and it took me years to figure that out.”
The notion of personalizing her engineering studies was sparked by participating during her senior year in the VDC, housed in the School of Engineering at Berkeley. Newman was a research assistant to Dr. Alice Agogino, the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, in Agogino’s VDC class for freshmen and sophomores, called “Designing Technology for Girls and Women.”
“They were studying the new-product development process, and I was studying how steps in the process related to gender. The students looked not only at gender but at diversity in general and at what constitutes a true customer population for product design,” Newman says. “The class had a mix of majors.computer science, biology, women’s studies, architecture with many more people outside of engineering than in. That mix was so inspirational to me! All the students in the class came out believing they could have some impact on the design process, and I took that lesson away myself.”
Jane Margolis, research educationist in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA and co-author of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, believes that like many female students, Newman responded to the highly interdisciplinary perspective advanced by the VDC.
“Innovative educators concerned with diversity are emphasizing that engineering and computer science are sciences that require critical thinking skills for solving problems across disciplines.health, architecture, the environment, and so on.and for enhancing investigation in these fields,” Margolis says. “If you want to introduce students to literature, you don’t focus on grammar, you talk about the big ideas and beauty in literature, what it conveys, what it can help you understand about the world. In the same way, engineering and computer science should have this interdisciplinary emphasis rather than a narrow focus on physics and programming.”
During the spring of her research assistantship, Catherine Newman attended the annual VDC Conference, observing the Berkeley students’ presentation of their VDC project [briefly describe the project here]. This year she attended the conference again, to present the results from her research in Agogino’s class. The two conference experiences had a great impact on her, she says.
“Attending the VDC conference is powerful. Influential people from IBM and HP and Microsoft were there, and I got a taste of academic camaraderie that I don’t think you can get at your home institution,” Newman says. “Plus, I want my projects to be interesting and meaningful to more than just me; I need a reason to keep going, and I’m motivated by programs and organizations like the VDC and the Anita Borg Institute. They don’t just say, .We’re out here supporting you’.they visit each year, ask how our project is going and how we followed up on last year’s project, and bring students together in conference. That third-party interest is energizing.”
Understanding how outside interest motivated her led Newman to think that a Ph.D. could be worth pursuing. “I realized that I wanted to emerge from my education with a body of new work to contribute,. she says, .and that a Ph.D. dissertation would bring in that third-party energy I like.”
The interdisciplinary mix and .third-party energy’ that Newman describes is affirmed by Dr. Agogino, who has taught at Berkeley for 20 years.
“After the VDC Innovation Workshop at the beginning of the class, Catherine said to me, .If I’d only had this as a freshman, my whole undergraduate experience would’ve been better,” Agogino says. .”I knew exactly what she meant. It’s thrilling for me as an instructor, too. I don’t get the chance to teach an interdisciplinary class like ‘Designing Technology for Girls and Women’ very often.”
Presenting their research from the class at the VDC conference and another design conference, and later getting that paper accepted for publication in an international journal, provided more outside recognition of Newman’s work and possibly helped turn her on to the possibility of a Ph.D., Agogino suggests. She also says she understands Newman’s comments about validation and tailoring engineering to fit your dreams and personality.
“Generally speaking, if you go to engineering conferences, it’s all men doing gear design . it seems narrow and you wonder how it’s benefiting the world,” she says. “At the VDC conference, socially beneficial design is important, and I feel validation myself from the VDC and from other professionals who are involved in it and who value the goals.”
Newman, who is a dancer as well as a Ph.D. student, is working now with a manufacturer of ballet toe-shoes to design a protective-pad insert. For her dissertation, she plans to pursue a topic of abiding interest: redesigning, or using elements of existing designs to create entirely new designs.