Women in Engineering
A problem solver extraordinaire Paul J. Heney • Vice President, Editorial Director
When growing up, Caitlin Kalinowski built a lot of “nerdy little things.” When she was three, four or five, she would do a lot of physical prototyping of ideas that she had. For example, she had little machines that would keep water warm or hand warmers and nose warmers. Engineering, she noted, is just using science to solve problems, it’s an applied field. Science and math are important fields in their own right, but to engineers they’re also tools. “Engineering is all about solving problems and making people’s lives better,” she said. “That’s where we should start when we introduce kids to the field. You start with a problem you, yourself have. Ask your kids how they would solve it themselves? I was lucky enough to have parents who were permissive about me doing all kinds of crazy things. Starting with building toys, like Legos, erector sets, all of that stuff. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what engineering was — I was just playing and building. It took until middle school to start to realize, ‘oh, there’s this field and it uses applied knowledge, and it can help solve other peoples’ problems.’ It slowly became clear that engineering was an interesting career path for me, but I don’t think I put all the pieces together until my freshman year of high school.” Another thing that shaped Kalinowski early on was her stepfather, who is an experimental physicist. As she grew up in New Hampshire, he would tell stories about his lab at Stanford, and about how he had a motorcycle he rode all around California. She noted that her parents were both academics, but neither of them were in STEM. 104
October 2021 www.designworldonline.com
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10/15/21 8:32 AM
