Hi All

We had a wonderful turnout at Franklin. The Cisco Academy room was bursting full. Thanks to the great and special Cisco teacher Barbara Lynch!! She really worked hard to get the girls there and it was such a great event.

This year we are having more meetings out at the schools, and we can meet with girls more often, They really want that and so do the teachers. So I am doing my best to do more and more. Being there is one of me, I will do my best to provide as much as I can. This meeting is one of three that we have set up at Franklin, so far this year. I am sure we will have more too. WE did all of this in 40 minutes too!!

I want to thank the wonderful presenters who did such a great job helping the girls understand all about engineering and technology careers. And the girls had great questions too. Thank you to Martine Worrall, Mechanical Engineer, Synapse,. and Kathie Flood, Video Game Designer, Microsoft. They did an outstanding job and had fun too. It is such a great experience to see how the girls react to getting this information. And they all said they would return for more IGNITE meetings.

Thank you to Barbara Lynch, Cisco teacher , and a great one too. She really creates such a wonderful environment where the students really want to be there and learn. Thank you to Pete Bawden, Project Lead the Way teacher for participating and sending his students and Damaris Pearson, Career Center Specialist for attending and supporting the events as well.

It is always a big team effort to make this a success. Here are the comments from the girls.

• I like how there was really a lot of different people from different technology came to talk to us today. It was fun to see what women can do. I learned a lot about so many careers. It really helped me.
• It is really nice to hear about women's doing these careers. I wish more girls could hear this today, it will help them too.
• It was wonderful to hear from real women. It was great.
• I liked hearing from women because it makes it easier for me to relate. She became an engineer and math was hard for her, that was good to hear.
• It was great to hear that there are scholarships for women to go into certain degrees in technology.
• I liked hearing about the pay in this field.
• It was great to hear about how these women made it in their careers
• I learned that you don't have to be a genius to pursue a degree in a technical field. I was surprised that the women do not face gender discrimination and get paid the same as men. I really want to go to Microsoft.
• The best part was the advice the speakers gave me. I loved the career of video game designer and they made good money too.
• I thought it was very interesting. There are so many things you can do with technology and I did not know about them. It was great.
• I liked hearing about the technical world. Everything about the program meeting was great. I really liked and enjoyed it. It was great to learn about technology and engineering and I am coming back to the future meetings.
• It was great to hear about different jobs. She wasn't great at math and became an engineer.
• It was interesting to hear about Martine and how she became an engineer, and she had some trouble in math and just kept working on it.
• I would now consider being a Mechanical Engineer. I thought it was great.
• I learned a lot about technology careers. It was great.
• Their stories helped me a lot to understand about these careers. I will start to consider engineering careers.
• Hearing stories from the women who have first hand experience in the technical field. Keep up the good work! It was interesting to hear how they "stumbled into" their majors.
• I learned new things about engineering, before I only had a vague idea of what it really was. I also liked that it was the personal side of engineering. It was interesting to find out that women are so needed within the technical field. Also that it is not necessary to be brilliant at math to be successful. I want to meet more women like this and learn about more jobs in these fields.
• What I liked about this event is that it really gave me much information. It made me want to reconsider my career goals. I want to have more information meetings like this one. All the girls should be in this.

As you can all see from the girls comments, they really need to have this information and it can help them expand their goals and what they can do.

Thank you all for making this possible.
Cathi