Doctor Cammy Peterson, an Electrical Engineering Professor, was nominated for and awarded the Faculty Women’s Association (FWA) Award for her mentorship in the LIFE program. She will receive the award on April 24, 2019.
The LIFE (Local Inspiration for Future Engineers) program, founded by Madeline Ward and some of her colleagues, is an organization that works to inspire current BYU engineering students as well as younger students attending local high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. Since its formation about one year ago, Dr. Peterson has been mentoring the program.
The LIFE program is a combination of the visions Ward and Dr. Peterson had. Before starting the program, they both wanted to start an outreach program since nothing like it was available. When Ward and her colleagues presented their ideas for a potential program at a Women in Engineering meeting, not long after, LIFE was created.
Of the program, Ward said, “I started the idea with a group of friends so I had some backing to present the idea and when I presented the idea to the college, they gave me a couple names for people who could be sponsors. Dr. Peterson was the best fit for sure. When I talked to her, she was all in. She said she had been wanting to do something like this. She thought it would be great with her goals for herself, academically and personally. We merged ideas of what we thought we could do and created LIFE.”
One main idea of the program is to reach out to the community and inspire children and teenagers to become more interested in the STEM field. Students from the engineering programs at BYU visit local schools to teach engineering principles and give students a hands-on experience.
Dr. Peterson said, “[BYU students] go into the classroom and teach the kids a little bit about engineering, like telling them what mechanical versus electrical engineering is, and then they’ll do a hands-on activity. What we’ve been doing for the hands-on activity is building bridges with spaghetti and marshmallows. It’s a lot of fun. The kids get really excited and at least the schools we’ve gone to, there’s not a lot of opportunity to do engineering.”
The lack of engineering opportunities combined with some research conducted by Women in Engineering led to this goal. According to the research, people generally decide around the age of nine if they are going to be interested in STEM. Both Dr. Peterson and Ward hope that by doing these outreach programs, they will inspire young people to explore these fields with an open mind.
“I feel, and I’m sure that Dr. Peterson and the other members feel that the younger we can expose kids to the cool things of engineering, the less they will propagate the stigma that you have to be super smart in science and math and you have to work in a dark basement coding,” Ward said. “While you do have to do science and math and sometimes you have to work in a dark lab, there’s so much more to engineering. It’s artistic and creative. The younger we can show kids that it’s something they can do, the better off they’ll be.”
The second purpose of the program is to inspire current BYU engineering students. The program holds ‘life lessons’ where professionals in the field are invited to come speak to the students. These lectures are open to students in all the engineering disciplines.
For the inspiration she provides to students at BYU and at schools across Utah Valley, Dr. Peterson was nominated for this award. She has contributed greatly to the program.
“[Dr. Peterson] has been an amazing guidance and inspiration for sure. She has great opinions and heads a lot of the ideas, especially for getting more people involved and finding speakers to come do lectures. She also has been with us to schools and will help present,” Ward said. “This has been our first year, so it has had its ups and downs in trying to get everything organized and smoothed out, and she’s just always been really positive and helpful in every way."