Now sophomores in the engineering program, Angela Campbell and Isabel Mitchell participated in the 2001 Illinois Minority Pre-college Internship (IMPRINT) program. Operated by the college’s Minority Engineering Program, IMPRINT pairs promising high school seniors with a faculty member on campus or with an employer. The experience is intended to introduce students to engineering and motivate them to apply to the College of Engineering.

Campbell worked on a project to simulate vapor movement in the evaporative header of a car as part of a research project to improve efficiency. She helped run the system, monitor vapor flow, collect data, and make graphics and digital photographs.

"It was a tricky system. I thought I might be sitting on the side, but people made sure I was involved and knew what I needed to do," she said. "Gradually, I was helping to do everything. At the same time, I was successful in my math class and making friends. It was fun every day."

The Geneva, Ill., native has always had an interest in engineering and astronomy--many of her preparations for college were motivated by a dream of being an astronaut. Her major now is mechanical engineering, but long-term plans include a doctorate in aeronautical engineering. In high school, she often used summers for enrichment, such astronomy and engineering camps, and she was looking for another productive summer and a way to stand out from the crowd of incoming freshmen when she learned about IMPRINT.

"This university can be intimidating, and especially so for females coming to the College of Engineering. But as soon as I got here, I found being in a college class wasn’t so scary," she said. "At the time I didn’t realize what a great opportunity it was to be here and to get to work on a real research project with professors and graduate students even before I was a student. It wasn’t giving up a summer because I still had lots of time to do summer stuff."

Campbell said one of her greatest challenges has been adjusting to seeing few women, and even fewer Hispanic women, in engineering classes. "It was sometimes isolating, but I feel it made me stronger to see that I could make it," she said, "and I developed more confidence in my abilities over the course of my freshman year." She joined the Air Force ROTC and a sorority and has plans to join an engineering society.

Her first mechanical engineering class in computer-aided design confirmed that she was on the right path. She had fun designing parts, which she has envisioned doing as a career. Motivated by a younger brother’s interest in cars, Campbell designed and assembled a toy car powered by a mousetrap as her simulation project. She followed a successful freshman year with a summer corporate research internship, which the IMPRINT experience helped her land, she said.

With several general education courses behind her, Campbell is looking forward to becoming more immersed in the engineering curriculum. Her advice to students considering engineering: "Get off to a good start and don’t fall behind because midterms are so important."

From Science Fairs to Lasers

Mitchell agreed that the best thing freshmen can do is "keep at it," even if the semester seems a little slow at the beginning. "All of the sudden, it will all come piling up on you and you’ll have to sort it all out. It’s just easier to keep working at it little by little from the beginning," she advised.

Like Campbell, Mitchell showed an early interest in science. She can remember entering ideas for inventions in a kindergarten science fair and every science fair after that. Circuits and inventing interested her, and she was intrigued when the letter inviting her to participate in IMPRINT arrived.

A few months later, she was in a campus laboratory using lasers to drill 55-micron holes--too small to see--in silicon for research on microcavity discharge devices. The holes could eventually accommodate neon tubes that improve screen displays. Several of Mitchell’s childhood friends were sight- or hearing-impaired, and she is interested in how technology might help them communicate, enjoy music, and use computers. Her dream job is to work in medical technology research. That made the IMPRINT research project a good fit.

"It was very cool work, and it was fun just learning how the university is and seeing how scientists act. I was learning so much every day that I felt I could hardly keep up with all the knowledge," she said. Mitchell had been one of only a few Hispanic women in her Ottowa, Ill., high school engineering course, so she was not surprised to find herself working in an all-male lab on campus. The experience made her more conscious of being a female minority, however. Taking a pragmatic view, she said she considered it part of learning how to work in a male- dominated field.

Outside the lab, Mitchell took a rhetoric class, saw friends who were also in the IMPRINT program, learned how to play the guitar, and went ice skating--a "pretty normal summer, but with different people." As summer ended, she was ready to sign on for the full freshman experience in computer science with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. She valued the people she met during the summer and hoped to work in a laboratory again.

"You definitely have to put your time in, but IMPRINT is a great experience," she said. "People think of scientists as boring and rigid, but the scientists I met were very intelligent and very funny, too. I liked just hearing them talk about science."

Graduate students working in the lab gave her advice on how to tackle the freshman year. "I listened to them and kept their advice in mind. My whole freshman year was such a good experience. I joined the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and learned so much from the upperclassmen," she said, "and it surprised me to realize how much I really enjoyed hanging out with Hispanics. My high school was mostly Caucasian, and I hadn’t realized how much I had missed my own culture until I came down here and became part of the engineering Hispanic group on campus."

Mitchell is serving as publicity chair for the society now. She is looking forward to taking more classes in her major, especially programming classes. Her first programming class was the most difficult and time-consuming of her freshman classes, but it was also her favorite because of a challenging programming project to move a car around white tape on a track.

"I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed campus and classes," she said. "I was a little nervous when I walked into my first classes and realized how smart everyone was--that I was competing with some of the best. I was among the top of my high school class, so it’s a little different not being ‘the smart one’ because everyone is ‘the smart one.’ It’s a hard program, but I think it will be worth it in the end."