Bringing a unique perspective

By DEVIN WEEKS

Staff writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Making bridges out of paper and tape is not as impossible as it seems.

It just takes creativity, planning and teamwork.

"I enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out how to make three books stand up with paper," Lake Pend Oreille Alternative High School junior Amanda Baker said Tuesday afternoon.

She and teammate Leila Vorhies, a sophomore at Sandpoint High School, were pleasantly surprised when their tabletop bridge, made of rolled pieces of paper and transparent tape, withstood the weight of three textbooks that mentor Melissa Cleveland set on the structure to test the students' civil engineering know-how.

"It’s actually not impossible," said Cleveland, who works as the community development director for the city of Hayden. "They all think it is at the beginning, and then they start bending the paper and realizing how strong they can actually make it working together."

Young ladies from eight North Idaho high schools partook in several hands-on experiments and projects at the DeArmond College and University Center on the North Idaho College campus during the first day of the Women in Science and Engineering program.

In its 12th year and previously known as Women in Math and Science, the program has expanded to reflect how math is such an important part of both science and engineering, explained University of Idaho marketing and communications manager Katie Marshall.

"We’re expanding engineering here with both North Idaho College and U of I with the computer science department," she said. "We’d also like to add more disciplines, too. It just made sense we would tie it in with engineering."

During the two-day conference, 200 high school women are exploring: mechanical engineering through a penny boat competition, where they have to build rafts that float out of items like foil, balloons, straws and tape; forensic sciences through work with color testing on fabric, where they determine which stains are blood using methods of forensic scientists in the field; and civil engineering with the paper bridge challenge. The sessions are led by mentors such as Cleveland, who is a U of I grad.

"The way women look at the world and the way we solve problems is different, oftentimes, than the way men do," she said. "We bring a unique perspective to engineering that’s so needed."

According to the Society of Women Engineers, the percentage of college freshmen who intended to major in engineering, math or computer science was 3.7 percent in 2007. That number jumped to 9.5 percent in 2017. Marshall said the number of women enrolled in the U of I engineering program increased by 22 percent in the 2018-2019 school year, and half the computer science graduates from the new U of I computer science degree program have been women.

"It’s really important to encourage women to join sciences and engineering because there definitely aren’t enough women in these fields," said Isabell Strawn, a U of I junior in biological engineering who led the penny boat challenge. "I feel like a lot of women could make a positive impact in these fields."