MEDIA ADVISORY

February 8, 2008

Engineering “Weak Tea” Encourages Girls to Consider Engineering

With National Engineers Week starting soon, one group is working hard to make sure local girls consider engineering as a possible career choice.

The PURPOSE Institute, founded in 2004 to boost the numbers of underrepresented minorities on engineering faculties, will host an Engineering “Weak Tea” event in conjunction with the weeklong celebration. The event will take place from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Feb. 9, in Room 1007 in Engineering Building I on NC State’s Centennial Campus. Registration for the event is closed, but media are invited to attend.

The event will enable about 35 local, middle-school-aged girls from groups underrepresented in engineering will participate in a tea experiment with engineering faculty and students. The girls, who will be joined by their mothers, will gain insights into the pursuit of academic excellence, learn how M&Ms are made, and observe the differences between weak and strong pH levels. Dr. Tuere Bowles, an assistant professor in the College of Education, has partnered with PURPOSE to track the success of the girls and the impact of the program.

Organizers hope these activities will help attract the girls to engineering.

This event is a follow-up activity to an event held in summer 2007, when more than 70 girls and their mothers spent time with 65 female engineering faculty at the first of three National Science Foundation-sponsored faculty professional development summits. The girls learned about faculty members’ jobs and their lives as engineers. Part of the event was also sponsored by the Mitchell Kapor Foundation and the Tommy Hilfiger Foundation.

The PURPOSE Institute was founded by Christine Grant, professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Special Initiatives in Engineering at NC State. She is one of only eight tenured female African-American chemical engineering faculty in the United States. PURPOSE, which stands for Promoting Underrepresented Presence On Science and Engineering Faculty, focuses on the development of African-American, Hispanic and Native American science and engineering faculty members.

— degraff —

MediaContact:
Nate DeGraff, (919) 515-3848 (office), (336) 253-2893 (cell), nate_degraff@ncsu.edu

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