International Womens Day Event – 7th March

On 7^th March ECS were VERY lucky to have 70  female pupils from various school visit the department. We invited them its international womens day on the 8^th March and we wanted to celebrate this as part of Univeristy of Southampton’s international women’s day celebrations. There were 5 Schools that attended. These were:

• Park High (London)
• Testwood School (Southampton)
• St-Edmonds (Salisbury)
• ALNS (Portsmouth)
• Sturnminster (Dorset)

We were pleased that we had a range of schools from a range of different areas. The pupils began their day with the opportunity to visit a lecture theatre  and have a welcome talk by Professor Michael Butler and Professor Dame Wendy Hall.

Professor Michael Butler is our Athena Swan champion, which means he does a lot of work to promote and support women in ECS. It was also under his guidance the department achieved a bronze award, which we are really proud of. Michael talked to the female pupils about computing. He gave a key message that stayed with us all for the entire day: ‘Technology is too important to be left to men’. This was first said by Professor Karen Spark Jones from Cambridge University and has since been used as inspiration by many notable women in computing. One pupil said that she found it interesting when Michael said that a British company called ARM made the chip inside the iPhone. She said that it made the manufacturing and creating of technology closer to home and something she felt she would like to get involved in.

Pupils also got to listen to Professor Dame Wendy Hall. Wendy is Dean of the faculty and does a lot of work with the Web Science Institute, which is an organization that observes and researches how the web is evolving and its impact on the world at large. Her job allows her to travel around the world and meet cool people like David Beckham! But she also has close links with Sir Tim Berners Lee and has met the Queen a number of times. One pupil said that she never thought working in computing would allow someone to travel a lot. They were very impressed.

Pupils were then taken in various groups to do different activities. There were three different activities:

• Optoelectronics: Pupils were given the chance to learn about the concepts of electronics and light.
• Robotics: Pupils were given the chance to work with Lego Mindstorms.
• Nanotechnology: Pupils were given the chance to learn about what happens in a cleanroom and the impact of nanotechnology on the wider world.

We have worked hard to provide activities and expertise that pupils would not have had at school. We also provided a tour of the university as well as volunteers from the computer science and electronics department. The quote of the day was:

‘Using tech is cool… but i found out today that making tech is simply awesome’