The Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team is participating in a four-year-long competition called EcoCAR 3. The competition consists of 16 North American universities, two in Canada and 14 in the United States, duking it out to see who can produce the best hybrid version of the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro. State College native, senior Anne Pauley is the only woman engineer on the project. Not only is she the only woman on the project, but she is a double major in mechanical engineering and music as well as in the Blue Band and a number of other musical endeavors while also being the captain of Penn State’s American Society of Mechanical Engineering.
HC: What is your role on the Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team?
AP: There are several different divisions on the team. They include system safety, control, mechanical, electrical, innovations, project management (business), communications and system modeling and stimulation. I am a part of the control and algorithms team – I pretty much make things work. The mechanical team builds it, electrical is in charge of the wiring, and the control team makes sure the car works.
HC: After you graduate in May, what is your plan? Will you stay involved with the EcoCAR competition while in grad school?
AP: I am actually attending graduate school at Penn State for mechanical engineering. I will probably and hopefully stay involved for as long as I can.
HC: What is it like being the only female engineer on the team as well as in STEM?
AP: You get used to it in mechanical engineering. I grew up in a house of all males so it’s not really that unusual to me. I think the hardest thing about being a woman in engineering is when other people define the field by its demographics because a lot of the women that I know who are in engineering don’t think that way – they’re in it because that’s what they’re interested in, and it can sometimes be frustrating when other people define your major by stereotypes associated with demographics.
HC: Have you ever felt like men, or even women, have negative opinions toward you for being an engineer?
AP: Most of the problems I have faced haven’t been with people of our generation. I normally only receive any flack with older people – they are not as accepting or as comfortable with women in this type of field.
HC: Why did you get involved with EcoCAR?
AP: I wanted to do a capstone project that was different, and I thought it would be more interesting to be on a bigger project because you get to be involved in a lot more areas and meet a lot more people. I wanted to be involved in something that was cooler to talk about. I don’t want to be like my friend who had to design a ball-bearing tester for his project, and he hated it.
HC: As captain of ASME Rube Goldberg, can you tell us a little more about what that is?
AP: The Rube Goldberg team consists of 10 members, and our goal is to take a simple task and perform it in many steps. Make it intentionally funny, overcomplicated and to just have fun with it. Like EcoCAR, we also like to integrate art into engineering and outreach to kids to show them what it means to be an engineer.
HC: What type of outreach programs does the Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team participate in?
AP: The type of outreach conducted by EcoCAR is to show what engineering students at Penn State are doing. The US Department of Energy is one of the sponsors of EcoCAR 3, so we try to educate the public on the potential of hybrid electric vehicles compared to traditional vehicles. We also do an outreach program educating students from 6th to 12th grade. While gearing outreach toward children and young adults, we also emphasize the importance of women in engineering. We want to show them all the cool things engineers do and how many different things we do.
HC: What is one thing you want Penn State students to know about EcoCAR 3 and the Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team?
AP: I want people to know that you do not need to be an engineer to be involved! There are over 70 students on the team specializing in so many different areas other than engineering such as business and communications and that it doesn’t matter if you have little experience before coming onto the project. There are currently around 15 freshmen on the team – you do not have to be a junior or senior and have years of experience.
There you have it, collegiettes! Anne is the perfect example of not letting stereotypes or other people’s opinions get in the way of her pursuing her interests. When it comes to your dreams, the limit does not exist.