More than 500 people attended the spring Femineer Summit at Cal Poly Pomona. The event brought female high school and middle school students, parents, teacher and special guests to promote women in engineering. Students showcased robotic products and programming feats that took months to create.

“I evaluated many programs aimed at attracting females to engineering and realized they were good at providing inspiration, but not good at providing solid skills,” said Dr. Mariappan Jawaharlal, mechanical engineering professor and co-founder of the Femineer program.

“The Femineer program closes this gap by teaching applicable skills—empowering girls to become confident in their abilities.”

Cal Poly Pomona College of Engineering is affiliated with Project Lead The Way, offering hands-on training to teachers, who take what they’ve learned back to their schools.

The college has facilitated training for more than 900 teachers who are now teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses to more than 40,000 middle and high school students every year.

– Contributed by Cal Poly Pomona