CEE Hosts Prospective Students at Celebrating Women in Engineering Day

On Sunday, March 1, a group of prospective female and male undergraduate students, and their families, attended the annual Celebrating Women in Engineering event sponsored by the College of Engineering, the Society of Women Engineers, and several COE departments, including Civil and Environmental Engineering.

A panel of women faculty and engineering students, including Professor Claudia Ostertag, and Katrina Harrison, fourth year CEE undergraduate, talked about being a female engineer. They covered all the various activities that enrich student life at Cal, such as undergraduate research opportunitites, study abroad, and participation in student organizations.

In the afternoon, prospective CEE students attended a break out section in Davis Hall, where CEE graduate student, Rosie Chae, led them in making star and heart molds from concrete, teaching them the principles of mixing concrete as they worked. The students cast their own molds and left them to dry. The finished forms will be mailed to the students as a memento of their day at Cal. Professor Ostertag joined the group and gave a brief presentation on her experimental research in "green" concrete.

Even though it was not part of the day's agenda, Katrina Harrison took interested students over to O'Brien Hall to see Professor Kara Nelson's wetlands exhibit. There they met up with Professor Evan Variano, who answered their questions about the exhibit.

Because of the involvement of dedicated CEE faculty, staff, and current students, the prospective students and their families got a good look at student life at Cal, including some of the cutting-edge research that will inform their undergraduate education in civil and environmental engineering.