Career Advisor: Goals Are Sometimes More Viable Than They Seem

June 1, 2021 by Hoda Khalil

From the already-small number of female students enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs, very few continue to pursue a career in academia. As a result, encountering a woman holding a doctoral degree in engineering is uncommon, and within the research and academia field, in particular, such an encounter becomes rare. However, one visit to the Advanced Realtime Simulation Lab (ARSLab) at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, shows a different perspective. Women, including myself, represent five out of six postdoctoral fellows working at the ARSLab, holding a doctoral degree in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, while researching in the field of engineering. Each of us has a unique background, challenges, and dreams.

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What Did You Do During the Pandemic?

The title of this article will become an important interview question from prospective employers. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique generation of engineering graduates who have had to deal with extraordinary challenges. Thus, employers are going to want to know how young professionals have managed to survive and thrive through this crisis.

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Hoda Khalil

Hoda Khalil is a postdoctoral fellow at the Advanced Real-time Simulation Lab and an instructor at the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University.

Karen Panetta

Karen Panetta (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.S. degree in computer engineering from Boston University, Boston, MA, USA, in 1985, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, in 1987 and 1994, respectively.

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine is the first magazine to focus on issues facing women who study or work in IEEE’s fields of interest.

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine strives to recognize women’s outstanding achievements in electrical and electronics engineering as well as enhance networking and to promote membership in IEEE Women in Engineering.

The publication also advocates for women in leadership roles and career advancement for women in STEM professions, and it facilitates the development of programs and activities that promote the entry into and retention of women in engineering programs.

A Catalytic
Conversion

Twenty-three-year-old Alayna Westcom stood onstage in a white dress with a blue atom emblem, blue shoes, and lab glasses. On a table covered by a white tablecloth, she added hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide to a little soap and then stepped back to watch. “Don’t try this at home,” she teased as white foam erupted onto the stage. It was a catalytic decomposition reaction that goes by the nickname “elephant’s toothpaste.” The hydrogen peroxide rapidly decomposes into water and oxygen gas, and when the gas gets trapped in the soap, voilà—bubbles, and a huge shot of foam.

This was the 2015 Miss Vermont pageant, and Westcom was crowned the winner. She would perform this experiment again when she represented Vermont in the 2016 Miss America pageant. In both pageants, she was the first contestant to perform a science experiment as her talent. As Miss Vermont, she spent a year visiting all 251 cities and towns in her state under the platform “Success through STEM.” Her goal was to teach science to thousands of students in an entertaining and hands-on way. There’s not a lot of fun in science today, she feels, and this matters because that’s how her love of science began—by getting her hands dirty. Westcom’s parents bought her and her siblings a toy microscope when she was very little, and they used it to do things like look at the wings of bugs.

These were “kid things,” sure, but also entomologist activities. Then, all of her science classes in elementary and middle school were fun and interactive. They were always moving around the classroom—they built their own rollercoasters and dissected chicken wings to study muscle attachments and movements and then cooked some to eat. “So many of my teachers had an impact on my career in ways they will never know,” Westcom says. “They were always making sure we were learning and having fun at the same time.”

When she got to high school, Westcom was drawn to forensics and crime investigation. Prime-time crime dramas like CSI certainly helped drive that interest, but she enjoyed her forensics class so much that she decided to study forensic science in college. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bay Path University in Massachusetts and then continued on to earn a postbaccalaureate certificate in medical laboratory science. Today, Westcom works as an autopsy technician for the University of Vermont Medical Center and as a medical technologist at Northwestern Medical Center. That’s two jobs. And she’s studying to take the Medical College Admission Test. She often works a day shift at one job and then goes to the evening shift at the other, but she likes both—they’re different, unpredictable, and ensure she’s always learning. In the lab, it’s not unusual to see her sitting at a microscope looking at a peripheral blood smear or a wound culture smear, analyzing for abnormalities. Each day brings different cases, new diagnoses, and new people. No matter what, she still loves looking through the microscope.

“Miss”ing the Point
So, what’s it like to be Miss Vermont and a scientist? Well, you have to work extra hard to be taken seriously. Westcom knows what people are thinking when they tell her she doesn’t look like a scientist or that she’s too pretty to be a scientist, but unfortunately it doesn’t stop with just words. “I’ve found that more often than not, I’ve got to go above to prove that even though I look put together, I’m still smart and focused,” she says.
For some reason, it’s hard to convince people that there’s no connection between the two, that “looks don’t dictate intelligence,” Westcom explains, so she has this advice to all young women: ignore them. “Do not let others dictate how far you will go,” she advises. “Of course there are negative stereotypes out there but they do not need to apply to you.”

In other words, just believe in yourself and keep on moving. One tactic that Westcom believes makes this easier is finding women in science, technology, engineering, and math fields to serve as role models. “There are women who have been through so much, have been in your shoes, and know what it is like, and they are more than happy to see you succeed,” she says.