I am from the university which is mentioned in Bob's original post. It is a fact that we have more female students than male students for quite a long time. We still teach a lot about different printing technologies along with design and other soft skills. One of the challenges I have seen in the past is to encourage female students to feel confident around big iron machinery. This is not necessarily true now. Female students in our program participated in almost all printing-related competitions and performed very well. We had an all-female team last year to compete at TAGA and won the grand prize. I think the gender gap still exists in this industry especially in the segment of manufacturing. The gap is not reflected in educational institutes. But it doesn't mean we are pumping more females to the manufacturing segment. Many of our students don't go to printing manufacturers after graduation. They don't associate printing as a future technology no matter how many new technologies are employed in big machines. Many students think web development, design, UX/UI, marketing, management as modern terms and pursue their careers after those. It is also generally true to other engineering programs on our campus that students are less interested in the positions associated with manufacturing than ones with "leadership". It needs efforts both from the educators and the industry itself to "modernize" the concept of manufacturing, so it will be an attractive career to young generations.
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Xiaoying Rong, Ph.D.
Professor
Graphic Communication Department
Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-14-2019 14:41
From: Taniya Ahmed
Subject: Telling the Story of Women in Printing
How do we integrate women? As a woman in printing, we have hired on and taught 2 interns how to screen print, ship, run the factory independently. This industry can be non stop but taking the time to stop and carve out a PLAN to educate, empower, and set examples with a a can do attitude - then we can see more women in print!
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Taniya Ahmed
Marketing
Kommon Thread
Fullerton CA
Original Message:
Sent: 10-11-2019 15:49
From: Bob Monte
Subject: Telling the Story of Women in Printing
I hope the WIP community finds these articles as interesting and educational as I did.
Some data is actually surprising, the history of women in print I found fascinating.
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Telling the Story of Women in Printing - October 14, 2014, By Joseph M. Adelman
"Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) both past and present named after the early nineteenth-century British mathematician. Here in our corner of early American studies, I want to mark the occasion by working through question that I've worked on in my own writing for years: how do we effectively integrate women into the history of printing in early America?".........
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Bob Monte
Strategic Account Manager
EFI
Austin TX
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