By Lenka Kollar

Meet a young engineer who helps design and regulate the fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy. She got a mechanical engineering degree from MIT and then signed up as a Navy nuclear officer. She goes out to ships and makes sure that the crew is ready to operate. Learn more about her job in the video below.

Learn more about Navy nuclear careers here.

By Lenka Kollar

In today's economy, it is easy to convince someone to become an engineer just by telling them that they will find a stable job and make a good income. However, this argument does not work for everyone, particularly women. Most women are not motivated by their paycheck, but rather by their accomplishments and the people they help along the way. Women are much more likely to choose careers in which they are directly helping people, such as nursing, teaching, and social work. While these are good and important careers, the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are missing out on the talents of women and their motivation to help people.

I've organized and participated in many nuclear science and STEM outreach events to young students, including female-only events such as "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" and Girls Scouts nuclear science badge events. In our career presentations we always make the point of the stable and high-paying jobs that the STEM fields can provide, but we miss making the connection to the huge humanitarian and social impact that an engineer or scientist can make. 

One of my friends recently told me a story of a brother and a sister who wanted the same goal of impacting the world in a positive way. The sister was concerned about the impact of oil drilling on the environment and studied policy in college and then worked for a think tank trying to change the policies for oil drilling. She worked hard but was only mildly successful. Her brother, on the other hand, studied engineering in college and ended up working for an oil company where he developed a tool that allowed oil to be more efficiently extracted with less environmental impact. Inadvertently, he had a much bigger influence on the very problems his sister was trying to solve with policy. His sister could have easily also used her talents and motivation to solve environmental problems technically instead of with policy. 

This story is a perfect example of how women do not realize that they can impact people's lives in a positive way with a technical degree and job. This is probably due to the fact that the creators of a technology do not usually experience the impact of their technology on people's lives as you do in a career where are are directly working with the customer, such as in nursing. But the problems that engineers solve and the things that they create help people everyday. Bridges, planes, medicine, computers, electricity all improve people's lives. But the connection between the actual people (not company) that made the technology and the users of the technology is missing, which is why women don't realize how much they can help humanity in the STEM fields.

This connection of helping people needs to be made in order to convince girls to become engineers. The propaganda above is taken from the front page of the White House initiative for Women in STEM. Salary should not be a focus for getting more women into STEM. It's not that women don't care about money, it's that salary isn't their number one motivator for picking a career. Women want to have careers in which they can improve people's lives. We need to show young girls just how much you can change the world for the better as an engineer or scientist.

I chose to be a nuclear engineer because I wanted to impact the world in a positive way by solving our energy needs. Why did you chose your current career?

What do you think of when you imagine a nuclear engineer? I bet you don't think of a winemaker.

Meet Joey, the winemaker nuclear engineering. In his research, he tracks the winemaking process by analyzing the elements in each stage, from the soil, to the grape, to the wine. In order to figure out what elements are in each phase, he takes samples and then bombards them with neutrons, thus making the samples radioactive. The gamma rays from the samples are then measured and since each radioactive isotope has a unique gamma signature, you can then figure out what elements are in that sample. Learn more about Joey and his research in the video below.

The I'm a Nuke campaign was formed to change the image of the nuclear engineer and show the public that we are real people with diverse interests. We all became nuclear engineers for different reasons and have done many different things with our degrees and careers.

What questions do you have for Joey?

By Lenka Kollar (a female nuclear engineer)

Diversity in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is lacking (read post), but why? Where does the gap start? The founder of GoldieBlox says it's in early childhood for women. Girls are encouraged to play with dolls and anything pink and not construction toys that make you think. Construction toys get kids interested in math and science and help them develop spacial skills. But these toys are marketed towards boys and not girls. But girls do want to be more than just princesses and they want to like science and math, watch the video below.

Only 11% of engineers in the United States are women and GoldieBlox is out to change that. More women than ever are attending college and we need to tap into that talent to enhance scientific innovation. Support GoldieBlox by voting for them in the Intuit Small Business Big Game competition. You can vote once a day! The winning business will get a professionally-produced commercial aired during the Super Bowl. Wouldn't it be great to promote women in STEM during the manliest event of the year?

What were your favorite toys growing up?

Don't forget to vote!!

By Rita Patel and Suzy Baker

A panel discussion at the American Nuclear Society conference in Washington, DC, this week featuring:

David Roelant from Florida International University
Lisa Marshall from North Carolina State University
Craig Williamson from South Carolina Universities Research and Education Foundation

Craig Williamson said it best, beginning his presentation by saying:

Fortunately the three panelists (pictured below) offered innovative ideas for increasing diversity at Nuclear Engineering & Technology programs on college campuses. Roelant spoke on behalf of Florida International University (FIU), a school with a “majority minority” student population. Additionally, FIU is the top producer of Hispanic graduates in the country. Many students at FIU are the first in their family to go to college. This can partially be attributed to the community programs, which FIU is involved in, including a dual-enrollment program for local high school students and outreach events for elementary school students. 

Likewise, Lisa Marshall from North Carolina State University (NCSU) expressed a need to reach underrepresented populations early, when they are forming their professional aspirations as preteens and teens. Marshall mentions capitalizing on the “cool factor” where she emphasizes unique opportunities such as the on-campus nuclear reactor available for student education and research. She has found success partnering with existing programs designed to support girls and minorities. Their summer programs for high school students result in an astounding 30% enrollment in Nuclear Engineering. Marshall wants to focus more on the relationship with the students who are enrolling in the program, rather than just let them be another statistic. Through a nurtured relationship, the students naturally transform into ambassadors, reaching back to their own communities encouraging other students to follow a similar path.

Craig Williamson rounded out the panel, beginning with his rather frank assertion that the nuclear industry has a great deal of work left to do in cultivating a diverse workforce. At the South Carolina Universities Research and Education Foundation, Williamson crunches the numbers on enrollment at nuclear programs and works to support programs throughout the state to actively increase diversity. As evidenced at South Carolina State, targeted programs work- this spring they will reach a new milestone. A student who completed her bachelor’s degree in a Nuclear Engineering Program in South Carolina will be receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. 

All of the panelists seem to agree that we must do more to be inclusive and active in promoting diversity at our Universities and beyond. 

How has your institution taken steps to increase diversity in your field?

Written by Lenka Kollar

The annual American Nuclear Society (ANS) Winter Meeting is in Washington, DC, this week and it kicks off with the Young Professional Congress (YPC). Young professionals from across the nuclear industry come together to discuss topics ranging from nuclear energy to work life balance and management skills. The workforce of the nuclear industry is aging and it is refreshing to see young faces in an industry that is resurfacing in the United States and around the world.

I was asked to participate on the "Work Life Balance" panel because of my personal blog, Healthy Fit Goddess. I spoke about how to incorporate a healthy lifestyle into your work life and why it's important to do so. You can see my presentation on Prezi. The other panelists (pictured below) included Shaheen Dewji of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Allison Miller of Sandia National Laboratory, and Rian Bahran of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Other highlights from YPC included sessions on communicating effectively and energy policy. We discussed how to communicate with our management to get what we want and enhance our career goals. We also participated in a remote presentation and discussion with Ben Heard of ThinkClimate on clean energy and the status of nuclear power in Australia. Did you know that Australia is one of the only developed countries without nuclear energy because it is outlawed? Ironically, Australia is also one of the biggest miners and exporters of uranium. It was definitely interesting to hear the parallel nuclear issues between Australia and the United States, even though one country has an existing nuclear energy industry and the other doesn't. In this session we also discussed writing a policy statement for the "Path Forward for Independent Energy Policy." 

The final session of the day was the "Voice of the Young Generation," where we voiced our concerns about ANS and the nuclear industry and our ideas for the future. We are passionate about communicating with policymakers and the public about nuclear energy issues and nuclear technology. We are also concerned about digitally archiving the knowledge of the past as the workforce retires. The enthusiasm and ambition of the young professionals in ANS is encouraging for a bright future for the nuclear field.

Are you attending the ANS meeting this week? I hope to see you there!

What do you think of when you imagine a nuclear engineer? The Simpsons? A 50-something white male? Someone boring and anti-social? A scientist locked in a lab with glowing radioactive liquid?

The I'm a Nuke campaign was formed to change the image of the nuclear engineer and show the public that we are real people with diverse interests. We all became nuclear engineers for different reasons and have done many different things with our degrees and careers.

Meet Melanie, a nuclear engineering graduate student at MIT. She's from Montreal, has a Bachelor's in music, and describes herself as a "super hippie environmentalist." Her first memories of nuclear energy came from The Simpsons and the three-eyed fish in the lake on the show. She later realized that nuclear energy did not create three-eyed fish and that it could be used to power the world in a "green" way. 

Melanie studies heat transfer at MIT, meaning that she figures out how to optimize the heat transfer from the reactor to the water/steam that spins the turbines, which then makes electricity. Thus, she is working on making nuclear power plants even more efficient. Watch Melanie's full interview below.