In the final days before the annual Girls In Tech field trip, coordinators and volunteers are working to make sure this year’s program runs as smoothly as the years prior. Girls In Tech is hosted for seventh grade girls from surrounding middle schools with two primary goals: recruiting more incoming freshmen and promoting females in tech fields.

Consisting of four workshops, hundreds of girls will cycle through each activity, receive catered food, and experience programs offered at the school. 

“I’m one of the three people organizing the entire event,” Graphic Design teacher Jennifer Gonzalez said. “I also will be teaching a course to the girls attending—[patterns]. So, I’ll show [the girls] how to make the polka dots, how you color the background, turn that into a pattern and then you can put it on a dress on the computer. I’ll show them from that to the finished step on how you actually design clothing on the computer.” 

Taking place annually since 2012, Girls In Tech will be running Jan. 22 and 23 from the beginning to the end of the school day. 

“As I was out recruiting for the current incoming eighth grade students, a lot of the students came up to me and were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I came to Girls in Tech last year! I’m so excited to apply for Southwest!’” Community Partnership Administrator Ryan Zaro said. ”So, it kind of gets them excited in seventh grade about what we can offer them here at Southwest. The whole idea behind it is to get more girls involved and to show the opportunities that these sorts of studies can provide them in the future.”

Activities in computer coding (80.1% male dominated in 2022), automotive mechanics (98% male dominated in 2022), and electrical engineering (90.7% male dominated in 2022) are offered by this program. By exposing what are considered very technical, often male dominated activities to young girls, they hope to diversify these career fields. 

“Where you get a more diverse group of people, you get better results,” Multimedia Communications teacher Monte Carman said. “I think you get less stagnation, you get more diverse opinions whether it’s diverse ethnicities or diversity and gender, whatever it happens to be, more diversity is definitely better.”

The hope is that with female representation in varying career fields, the output of these career fields will also cater better to female consumers as well as developers.

“In computer science, we talk a lot about bias, but bias isn’t an ugly thing,”  Computer Science teacher Dana Cuni said. “It’s when your data doesn’t represent the whole population, and to make sure we’re alleviating bias when we’re doing computer science, we need to make sure all voices are represented. That includes girls.”

In addition, the exposure can create a more inclusive environment as more women feel comfortable and capable of exploring these fields.

“I think out of all the programs [automotive] is very interesting for all of them,” sophomore Irene Soto said. “When they come into the auto room, they’re like ‘Oh, wow. Girls actually do this’ and it’s pretty cool to see them help us work on cars and be interactive and ask questions. My freshman year I was one of the only girls in my class of, like, 20 boys. So, it was definitely a little intimidating, but it makes no difference, we’re all learning the same thing.”

A majority of Girls In Tech coordinators agree that the program serves to make students aware of new career paths 

“How many girls are in middle school and  want to be an auto mechanic when [they] grow up?” Fashion teacher Levi Harbeson said. “But, if they get to come in and they get to see what our auto lab looks like and see how a car works, that allows them to already have that avenue opened up to them. It just shows that there’s so much more to high school let alone the world than just your core classes.”