News Release

CONTACT: Della Elliott, Public Information, (619) 644-7690, della.elliott@gcccd.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                           March 16, 2006

‘Cutting Edge’ career-night event at Cuyamaca College

Event geared for young women interested in
non-traditional fields

EL CAJON – For NASA computer engineer Bridget Landry, it was the first lunar landing in 1969 that planted the seed in the then-8-year-old’s mind to pursue a career in the space program.

“That was pivotal – a very influential experience in my life,” said Landry, who was the keynote speaker for a career-night event held at Cuyamaca College Tuesday to encourage young women to consider careers in science, technology, engineering or other male-dominated fields.

“I watched that and thought, ‘that is so totally cool.’”

Funded by the National Science Foundation and sponsored by the college’s Women in Technology Club, this was the second year for the event, which drew some 250 attendees. More than 30 tables were set up inside the gym, each featuring demonstrations or displays of a wide spectrum of professions, from automotive technology to avionics design engineering.

“Along with our strong instructional programs and three new buildings under construction, we are always finding new ways to reach out to the community,” Dr. Geraldine M. Perri, college president, said in her welcoming remarks for the event, called, “Cutting Edge Careers for Modern Women.”

Event organizer Connie Elder, a computer information systems instructor at Cuyamaca College, said the event targeted middle-school and early high-school girls because studies have shown that it is around that age that girls often lose interest in math and science.

“Don’t be scared if math and science are tough for you,” Landry admonished the girls in attendance. “Don’t be scared to ask for help. When I was growing up, I wanted to work hard at math and science because I wanted to do something that was really a struggle – just think how much more satisfaction it gives you to do something really hard.”

These days, Landry, a Clairemont High School and UCSD graduate who went on to get a graduate degree in planetary science from Caltech, is working on the Cassini Mission to Saturn from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Last week’s worldwide media accounts of Cassini’s dramatic images of plumes of liquid water spewing from one of Saturn’s moons were of particular interest to Landry, since she is part of the NASA team that made the discovery.

“I send commands to the spacecraft to do specific tasks,” Landry said, explaining her job as a sequencing engineer. “The discovery that the water was liquid, and so close to the surface of the ice was very, very exciting. We knew that (the moon) Enceladus is covered with ice, but we had no idea about the presence of liquid water.”

Cassini’s discovery of a huge cloud of water vapor over the moon’s south pole and the fractures from which the vapors are escaping have scientists speculating that Enceladus is geologically active, and that the geysers are the result of volcanic activity. The implications of these findings are enormous, pointing to the possibility of living organisms existing on the moon.

“It’s wonderful to see scientists scratching their heads over discoveries such as this,” said Landry, whose past projects prior to Cassini include the Hubble Space Telescope, the joint U.S.-French oceanographic Earth orbiter Topex, and the Mars Pathfinder. “That, for me, is the most exciting part of my job. With this discovery, all bets are off.”

The audience listened in rapt attention as Landry recounted the 1998 launch of Cassini and the several gravity-assisted maneuvers that sling-shot the spacecraft along its seven-year journey to reach Saturn’s orbit. Later, they peppered her with questions, such as what it’s like to be a woman working in NASA’s science and engineering division, which remains a predominantly male bastion. According to a study NASA published in 2002, 80 percent of its science and engineering workforce is white and 82 percent is male.

“For my first five years on this project, I was the only woman in my department, but they just hired four people, all women,” Landry said. “And there are more women in the hard science end of things – the head of the spacecraft team which ensures the health of Cassini is a woman.”

Asked how the work environment has changed with the addition of more women, Landry said it’s become more multidimensional.

“It isn’t just work now,” she said. “It’s become more of an environment for a whole person than a compartmentalized person.”

Landry, an accomplished costume creator who first began sewing costumes at age 13 for science fiction conventions and has gone on to win national and international awards for her work, also has a background in theater and ballet. She is a study in contrasts, calling herself a tomboy growing up, but, in the same breath, describing to the audience the intricacies of crocheting and cross-stitching.
Asked how she prepared for graduate school and the academic challenges of her chosen field, she said self-confidence is key.

“You have to believe in yourself,” she said. “There are a lot of men at Caltech – it was like rugby – real rock-’em, sock-‘em.”

For students like Jamie Manley, who’s in her first year at Cuyamaca College, Landry’s presentation proved both enlightening and inspiring.

“Women can do everything – take the lady who spoke here tonight,” she said. “That’s so amazing, so cool what she does.”

Tanya Bradford, who brought her two daughters – one a Mount Carmel High School freshman and the other, a 10-year-old – said events like the one at Cuyamaca are needed to lend focus to today’s youth, given all the distractions of the everyday world.

“I work, but I don’t have a profession,” she said. “I wanted to bring them here to help them figure out what they want to do with their lives. I’m trying to encourage them to do something with their lives.”

One presenter whose life story is nothing if not motivational is software engineer Fran Quiñones, who works for Lockheed Martin as a deputy program manager for the Army’s Future Combat Systems. Before her employment with Lockheed Martin, she served 23 years in the Marine Corps and in the Navy. In 1994, she was selected by Image, Inc. as the Navy’s Hispanic Officer of the Year for meritorious service to her community. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of San Diego State University, Quiñones earned a master’s in computer science from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

With an easy smile and a demeanor of someone accustomed to the cacophony of children, Quiñones laughed and joked with the girls who converged at her table to try their luck building a frame for a model rocket, using only straws and Gummy Bear candies. The girls were given an imaginary budget to work with and were encouraged to sketch out their designs on paper, but most just plunged ahead with their construction materials, usually with less-than-favorable results.

“This teaches them the importance of teamwork and introduces them to the concept of working under a budget,” Quiñones said.

Making a repeat appearance at the event was a criminialist with the San Diego Police Department, who, in true “CSI” fashion, showed observers how to differentiate between a knife stained with ketchup and one with blood by using a high-tech tool called a Crime-lite, a high-intensity forensic light source that brings out trace evidence at crime scenes.

“This is basically a $15,000 flashlight,” said Annette Peer, a 22-year veteran of the SDPD crime lab who testified in the trial of David Westerfield, convicted in the death of Danielle van Dam.

Several of the exhibits Tuesday provided hands-on learning, said event organizer Elder, because research suggests that one factor that discourages women from technical fields is that, as youngsters, they aren’t exposed or encouraged to handle mechanical or technical things the way boys are. Instead of fixing bikes or building model planes, they’re playing with Barbie or coloring pictures.

Landry agreed that discouraging girls “from getting their hands dirty” is every bit as limiting as the persistent assumption that girls don’t do as well in math as their counterparts. Then, too, is the concern that many girls have of appearing too “brainy” and scaring off boys.

“I do this kind of outreach, often through science fiction conventions, to convince girls that there is a place for them in the math and science fields,” she said. “The message is that they don’t have to be the stereotypical nerd to be successful in these fields. It’s possible to lead a normal life – to have children, if you want.”

Landry, a Van Nuys resident, has a 5-year-old daughter, and a husband who quit his job to be the stay-at-home parent, an arrangement that Landry said is necessitated by her job, which, depending on what’s going on with Cassini, sometimes has her working nights.

“It’s caused a little heartburn because it’s not what my husband was raised to do,” Landry conceded. “There’s the whole image thing – it’s a challenge.”

But more women are finding ways to overcome the challenges of working in math and science fields in jobs that are non-traditional, Landry said.

“I think I have been lucky in a lot of ways pursuing my career at this time,” she said. “The projects are more female-friendly, more family-friendly.”

Still, that isn’t to say that no biases exist for the women of NASA, Landry said.

“I think it’s more subtle than it used to be,” she said.

For more information about Cuyamaca College, an 8,000-student community college in Rancho San Diego, go to www.cuyamaca.edu. A series of eight-week classes in subjects including art, business office technology, computer information science, English, math, geography, history, psychology, and more, starts Monday, March 20, with additional classes starting March 25, April 1, 8 and 22.

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