Ford invests in women engineers in the U.P.

HOUGHTON — The Ford Motor Company is investing in Women’s programs at Michigan Tech.

At a Career Success Day Breakfast sponsored by Michigan Tech’s Presidential Council of Alumnae, Michigan Tech was gifted $30,000 from Ford. The money will provide 10 scholarships for each of three summer women’s programs offered by the university. The programs are Women in Engineering, Junior Women in Engineering, and Women in Computer Science.

“Michigan Tech offers these programs for many reasons. One is that there’s this gap in the STEM fields and engineering and we really want to work to bridge that,” said Amanda McConnon of MTU Pre-College Outreach. “Showing these students from middle school and highschool age that it can be a great career and you could have interest in it and we give them an idea of what these careers could be.”

The STEM fields are science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Both Michigan Tech and Ford see the importance of encouraging young women to explore these fields.

“Ford chose Michigan Tech for this program because Michigan Tech had the data to back up what they are doing,” said Cynthia Hodges, Engineering Manager, Ford Motor Company. “Over the 40 years that they’ve been doing this program, they had data to indicate that 56 percent of women that attended the program ended up studying engineering in college and that’s important to us.”