Governor Doyle visits Women in Engineering camp
PLATTEVILLE - On July 25, Governor Jim Doyle, the First Lady Jessica Doyle and Chief of Staff Susan Goodman visited the Women in Engineering Program (WEP) camp at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. This stop was one of many on the governor's tour of Southwest Wisconsin (Grant and Crawford counties). The governor and his wife stressed the importance of women in engineering and encouraged participants to enter the field.
"The governor and first lady visit to our women in engineering camp brings visibility to issues surrounding access to and information about STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] careers for girls. The visit emphasizes the importance of providing educational opportunities for young women in our state. Their visit to our campus and interaction with the girls help our campus to spread the word to young women that we have an outstanding engineering program with a strong reputation of supporting both men and women," said Tammy Salmon-Stephens, director of WEP.
Jessica Doyle, former middle school teacher, spoke briefly to camp participants before Governor Doyle arrived, "The governor and I, as we go around the state, are continually trying to encourage young women to get involved in math, science and engineering." She congratulated the participants for taking advantage of this opportunity.
Chancellor David Markee expressed gratitude over the governor's visit. Markee said that the governor's visits to UWP are important because, during them, the governor sees the programs and institutions he has helped to create through legislation and appropriations.
After Markee introduced him, the governor spoke to camp participants about the importance of engineers to the growth of Wisconsin, "We need a lot of engineers in this state and in the future we're going to need more and more. This is the reason we're emphasizing having you get interested in it."
The WEP camp participants consisted of minority and majority ninth through twelfth grade girls from around the state. They all expressed interest in the engineering field, focused on such engineering disciplines as automotive, chemical, civil, environmental and robotics.
As part of the visit, Rob Hasker, UWP computer science/software engineering professor, demonstrated the project the girls would be working on and underscored software engineering's importance to many engineering disciplines. Governor and Mrs. Doyle traversed the room, watching and talking to camp participants as they worked on programming their computer-activated rescue robots.
On his way out, the governor surprised one of the pre-college classes - a class of about 40 low-income students from around the state learning about leadership and exploration in preparation for college entrance. The governor and/or his cabinet members visited many other places on campus, too, including the criminal justice program, Women in Engineering Mentoring Center, and the agricultural program.
Anyone interested in learning more about the Women in Engineering Program may visitwww.uwplatt.edu/wep/ or contact Salmon-Stephens at (608) 342-1563 orsalmont@uwplatt.edu
Contact: Tammy Salmon-Stephens, director, Women in Engineering Program, (608) 342-1563,salmont@uwplatt.edu
Prepared by: April Schmidt, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, schmidap@uwplatt.edu
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