Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 1 Spring 2018 | Page 32

For young women who are making their
way into mechanical engineering, Kasarda has
several pearls of wisdom, including one from a
sandwich shop.
“I’ve done some research with a member of
the VT School of Education about this, and
one of the reasons I think women aren’t as
well represented in engineering, is because of
a social perception,”
Kasarda explained.
“Women have an
extra layer of social
navigation to man-
age, that depends
on personality to
some extent, where
when they walk into
a class and there are
only two women,
they feel, ‘should I be
here? Am I part of
this community?’ I’m
not saying it doesn’t
happen to men by
any means, but that
‘do I belong?’ ques-
tion is almost always
there with women
and other students
from underrepre-
sented groups.
“Based on my
professional de-
velopment work with public school teachers
to help them understand and incorporate
engineering in their classrooms, I learned that
there is also a perception that you need to be
a math superstar in school to even consider
engineering, and that’s not really true. You
absolutely need to be able to do the math, but
if you got a B in high school calculus, you can
apply for an engineering program. You’ll have
MOMENTUM
SPRING 2018
to work, because it’s challenging and it should
be challenging, but it’s doable.
“Women are also too hard on themselves
and tend to blame themselves when things
don’t go well. Things are different for women
and that’s not going to change overnight. No
matter how hard you work and how much
you accomplish, there will always be people
problems to deal with
that seem personal. Be
honest with yourself, but
don’t always just blame
yourself. If someone
is a jerk, they’re a jerk,
that’s not your problem.
Just deal with it as best
you can and absolutely
look for options for
working with better
people – it just may take
a while to change your
circumstances.
“Finally, I’d say find
an advisor/mentor
and don’t just choose
someone randomly,”
Kasarda said. “You want
a personality match with
them not just an interest
in the same topic or
engineering discipline.
If you are going to do
research or go to gradu-
ate school, talk to other students and find out
an advisor’s style, and how they do things. I
saw a sign once in a sandwich shop that said,
‘it’s not how your date treats you, it’s how
they treat the wait staff’ and this holds true in
professional relationships also. This is critical
because at the end of the day, how people treat
those who may not be at their same station in
life, that shows who that person really is.”
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