Nikki LaPierre '21

The Bulletin asked LaPierre about the national program designed to expose girls with little access to engineering to the subject.

The National Academy of Engineering's EngineerGirl Ambassador program trains and supports 20 female high school students as they design, develop and implement projects in their local communities that expose younger girls to the field and encourage them to think about pursuing careers in engineering. How did you become involved in the program?

It started when I took the Winter Term course "Passion to Pass it On" in January 2020. The course focused on philanthropy, and we spent a few days working with the students at Bellesini Academy [a school for grades five through eight in Lawrence, Mass.]. I was in one of their English classes making small talk with the girls about what they wanted to be when they grew up. They were talking about awesome careers, but I noticed that none of them said anything within a STEM field or engineering. So, I started researching ways to expose the Bellesini girls to engineering, and I found the EngineerGirl program. I was happy to get accepted into the program in May 2020.

Why is it important to you that girls become exposed to engineering and other STEM fields?

Being a woman in engineering has always been difficult. Women are consistently underrepresented in STEM fields. I've had to navigate the engineering field by myself, and I've learned that women have to be powerful and know their worth to succeed in this field. Engineering can lead to so many opportunities in life and can set you on a really good path. Engineering can also teach you self-confidence: Engineering teaches people how to be leaders. So, I see that engineering goes hand-in-hand with important things that I think every little girl should learn.

You've designed an eight-month program for the Bellesini girls that you hope, you've said, will teach the girls that they can apply engineering to almost every aspect of life. Tell us more.

I started biweekly training sessions with the other ambassadors through the National Academy of Engineering in August 2020, and I started my program in January 2021. In my program, I meet with the Bellesini girls monthly. Each month focuses on a different type of engineering. For example, in our second month, we talked about chemical engineering. We looked at recipes for three different types of cookies, and we discussed how, for example, adding butter to a recipe changes the cookies. Then, I had the girls figure out which recipe was for thick cookies, which was for thin cookies, and which was for soft cookies. Finally, I asked the girls to chemically engineer their own cookie recipe: If they wanted chewy cookies, how could they do that? The girls were so excited that they made their own cookies, without even realizing that they were doing chemical engineering. Then I presented the basics of chemical engineering to them, and they were able to connect the cookie recipes to what I had just taught them. It's really them learning for themselves; I want this to be their journey with engineering that they have a personal connection with.

You engaged in the experience at Apple, Inc., through Students on the Forefront of Science at Brooks. How are you using that experience to enhance your EngineerGirl program?

It's similar in that, at Apple, we also did a lot of learning for ourselves coupled with lectures. My mentor at Apple, who I think is amazing, is going to try to come talk to the girls. I've also reached out and spoken with a lot of women engineers who are in the professional field, and they'll also come in and talk to the girls.

Did you expect that your time in "Passion to Pass it On" would result in you leading an engineering program at Bellesini?

I've always had a connection to engineering and also to helping out with my community; I didn't expect to find a way to merge those connections in Winter Term, but I'm really happy to have been able to. Last year, I took a computer science class and a poetry class at the same time, and what I wrote about in my college essays was the combination of my love for poetry and my love for computer science, because both are writing in art form. That's been pivotal to my Brooks experience. Right now, I'm taking an engineering class and a poetry independent, and it's very interesting how those have always gone hand-in-hand for me.