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by Ashley Warren Recent UNR graduate Anita Savell was the top of her class in electrical engineering and the spring recipient of the university’s Herz Gold Medal.
and science quicker than their male counterparts, and, as such, are given praise, whereas boys are encouraged to continue trying. PHOTO/ASHLEY WARREN When those subjects become more complicated and less intuitive, girls lose confidence in their own abilities. When given the opportunity to enjoy math and science like any other hobby, girls are more likely to see those subjects as career options. Savell attributes her upbringing to her academic path. “My mom always told us we could do anything we wanted to do, and she was very awesome like that,” she said. Both of Savell’s parents work in the sciences, and her sister is working toward a master’s in biology. “Math was never something I was afraid of or taught to be afraid of,” she said. “Numbers were just something I could work with, and so I thought that was really helpful for me choosing engineering. Math is not an obstacle. It’s a tool I can use.” Catching these negative associations at a young age can help girls find a place in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). In July, the national Girl Scouts organization added 23 STEM-related badges to its roster.
early mentoring
Nevada’s women engineers are gaining prominence
E
ngineer and scientist Anita Savell rambles off her accomplishments like they’re no big deal. A recent graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, Savell was the recipient of the Herz Gold Medal, the university’s oldest award given to students who show remarkable academic tenacity. Savell achieved a 4.0 GPA, majoring in electrical engineering at the top of her class, with a biomedical emphasis, and minors in biology and statistics. This fall, she enters UNR’s School of Medicine to become a doctor.
Engineering has long been a maledominated field. The gender disparity in the field is waning, albeit slowly, and Reno’s own engineering culture is reflective of this larger societal trend. Myths that girls and women don’t organically gravitate toward math and science are pervasive. The current thinking is more complicated than that. A study published in Science Scope identified a trend of girls losing interest in science and engineering around seventh grade, but that’s attributed to a few factors. One, said Savell, is that young girls tend to understand math
“It’s important to target elementary school kids, because, in my view, that’s where that [stigma] begins,” said Judy Kareck, president of the Sierra Nevada chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). SWE visits local elementary schools to excite kids about careers in engineering, and also aids engineers at any stage of their careers. Representation is important to changing the perception of who engineers are. “The kids would be like ‘You’re an engineer?’ and we show them, yes, even women can be engineers,” said Kareck. Kareck holds a degree in mechanical engineering from UNR, along with licenses in both mechanical and civil engineering. Currently, she works on potable water efforts. Both Savell and Kareck said that women in engineering tend to have shared experiences of discrimination. For non-binary engineers or women of color, often the discrimination is two-fold, targeting both their gender and their race. “When you’d ask my mother, born back in the World War II era, she’d tell me, ‘Of
