Northeast Meets Northwest Women in Technology Project

摘要

The "Northeast Meets Northwest Women in Technology Project" encourages young women to consider careers in technology and engineering by direct exposure to a complex problem in industry. The project partnered women in high school from Washington and Massachusetts, high school teachers, an engineer from Texas Instruments, and an engineering advisor from Western Washington University. The students' objective was to solve an on-going problem for Texas Instruments at one of their manufacturing facilities. The students used concurrent engineering practices to understand the manufacturing problem. The students successfully designed, built, and tested a prototype inspection device. This device is currently used on the Texas Instruments assembly line to check for the presence of internal and external threads on four different plastic and metal assemblies. This device ensures that assemblies that do not have threads do not continue onto further, expensive processes, only to be scrapped by the final quality check. The problem-based learning project created an opportunity for students on the team to investigate engineering as a career option.