The Shadowing Newsletter

Volume II, Issue 3 March 2, 1999

	Editorial
The Shadowing Newsletter is published monthly by the Delta Program, an organization involved with Maricopa County businesses and the Mesa Public Schools. Our goal is to improve the ed-ucational pro-cess by foster-ing cooperation between busi-ness and education. We do this by providing sha-dowing visits among teachers, administrators, and company employees. The Shadowing Newsletter is published the first of each month between September and June. Publisher: Hal Wochholz (602) 891-2600 Editor: Duncan Kunz (602) 891-2525 duncan.z.kunz@boeing.com	As the Editor, I can write about personal things in this column – once in a while, anyway. So I’m going to write about a conversation I had nine years ago with a woman who later became my wife. I’d asked her why she’d become a nurse. I had always thought that I, too might have enjoyed a medical career – if I’d been willing to put up with a ten-year stint of school and didn’t faint at the sight of blood – and had never really known a nurse. She embarrassedly tried to blow off my question. Finally, after a bit of pressing, she admitted the reason she’d chosen her life-time profession. Both her mother and several of her friends at school told her it would be the best way to meet a rich young doctor.		Even today, there are people who aren’t angered by such a statement. Even today, there are people who – not out of meanness, but simple ignorance – overlook half of all the potential engineers, manufacturing people, toolmakers, plumbers, and telephone installers. Simply because they’re women. Next week (as I write this) I’m travelling to Poston Junior High School for career day. I’m planning on taking a graduate mechanical engineer (Stanford), a high-tech administrator specializing in Information Technology issues, a systems engineer who is also a flight instructor, and myself. I’ll be the only man in our group.		When we go to Poston, we hope to show everyone that today’s companies can’t afford to ignore half of all tomorrow’s high-tech workers because of their sex. We want our kids to know that they can be whatever they want to be by the best way possible – showing them successful role models just like them. Our companies need bright, hardworking people to keep our community and country competitive and prosperous. Whether you’re a girl or a boy, you can be whatever you want to be: engineer, homemaker, teacher, electrician, or even a nurse. That is, if you don’t faint at the sight of blood.
*Coming to a School Near You: The Warren Merriman-Brian Hartman Traveling Skateboard Show*
Okay, we’ll admit it – shadowing is fun. We get a break from the classroom or the daily office routine, meet new people, see things we don’t always see, and manage (hopefully) a longer lunch. We tell ourselves that our shadowing program brings people together and provides people from both the companies and the schools valuable insights to the others’ concerns and needs. But sometimes we look beyond the actual shadowing for the results – whether those results are interaction with the students, company career days, internships, school/work cooperative ventures, or hiring new employees.		Shadowing in paying off for several Boeing teammates and local schools. Last month, Warren Merriman, a Boeing engineer, along with Ravi Mathur and Richard Sheehan, hosted four area teachers: Jim Kretschmer from Mountain View High School (mathematics), Klause Mortensen from Mountain View (physics), Gabriele Fajardo from Stapley Junior High (biology), and Selena Graves from Shepard Junior High (biology). During the morning, the Boeing people demonstrated some of the computer tools used by the engineers, including a virtual reality demonstration used in the design of a new product.		Rather than design a helicopter, they would be designing a skateboard. The workshop would have two purposes: to show the importance of mathematics in engineering and to illustrate the design procedure, and allow the teachers to actually participate in it. This would give them an idea of what an engineer does. The teachers are looking forward to the program, and several other Boeing groups plan to use portions of the same approach to provide both teachers and students with some "real-life" examples of engineering design. Finding the "test pilots" for the new Skateboard design shouldn’t be a problem, either!
*School Visits*
Two Boeing visits highlight this month’s post-shadowing activities. Warren Merriman (see article above) had a chance last month to visit five mathematics classes taught by Jim Kretschmer at Mountain View High School. The presentation he used was in two parts and dealt with the study of engineering. The first part dealt with a series of questions that he asked the students to consider. How they answered these question might indicate whether they could consider engineering as a career.		The second part of the presentation dealt with the preparation they would need at the secondary school level to study engineering at the college level. The presentation was very well received, especially by the upper division students. Another spinoff from last month’s shadowing effort led toto consider. How they answered these question might indicate whether they could consider engineering as a career. Later, in a discussion on things that the engineers could do during the teacher visit, they discussed a workshop to be given by Warren and Brian Hartman, another Boeing engineer.		This workshop would be a simplified example of the procedure several teammates from the Training Systems area to visit Poston Junior High School as part of a career day. Logistics Engineer Duncan Kunz, Mechanical Engineer Connie Burkett, and Programs Administrator/Analyst Barbara McKinnon will discuss Boeing, their jobs, and what’s needed for a high-tech career with seventh, eighth, and ninth-graders. More on this, and other "success stories" in our next issue!