03/11/2014
Girls Like Engineering, Too
MINT Camp for Female Pupils
Last Monday the one-week MINT Camp for girls kicked off, in which eleven young female pupils aged between 15 and 18 and interested in technology participated during their autumn holidays. The Camp had been initiated by the Baden Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) in Heidenheim with free entry for the participants. The week-long event offered an interesting and varied program staged by the DHBW and also by Voith.
The Camp started on Monday with a meet and greet round for the girls, followed by a lunch at the Voith staff restaurant. The afternoon consisted of study counselling sessions at the Cooperative State University, as well as a lecture on product development. On Tuesday morning, the pupils were invited to a physics lecture together with third-semester mechanical engineering students. This was followed by the event "Career Marketplace" at the Voith Training Center, where the girls were given an overview of the many technical jobs in a company such as Voith. After a presentation the pupils had the opportunity to talk to female Voith employees from technical departments and also to dual students from the study courses electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and industrial engineering and gain an insight into their everyday working life. On the third day of the Camp the girls attended a rapid prototyping course at the DHBW laboratory. In addition, they also assembled a helical gear in the afternoon. On Thursday the pupils went back to Voith to attend a course in welding.
Friday was the last day of the MINT Camp, featuring a concluding presentation in front of parents and friends, followed by an informal get-together.
Many of the girls are not sure yet what kind of job they would like to do in the future. Others have a highly diverse range of interests and an accurate picture of their career - from medicine and industrial engineering to training for the police.
"An event like this helps us to orientate ourselves - an opportunity for which we happily sacrifice our autumn holidays once in a while," said one of the girls full of enthusiasm.
The pupils were informed about the MINT Camp through a range of channels - newspaper advertisements, personal contacts and also by their teachers. The goal of the MINT Camp is to raise the quota of women in MINT careers (mathematics, informatics, natural sciences and technology).
