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Embry-Riddle Plans Women in Aviation Day Program for Local Female Middle-Schoolers

Women’s Baja SAE Team to Speak to Students

Daytona Beach, Fla., March 19, 2009 -- More than 500 female middle-school students from Volusia County will visit Embry-Riddle on Thursday, March 26, for the annual Women in Aviation Day program.

Accompanied by their school counselors, the girls will participate in activities designed to educate and motivate them to pursue careers in math, science, aviation, and aerospace. The program, which begins at 9:30 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m., will be held in the ICI Center on Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, 600 S. Clyde Morris Blvd.

The morning kicks off with an activities fair/static display that engages the students in navigation exercises and in airplane, flight, and robotics simulations.

The guest speakers at this year’s event will be members of the Embry-Riddle women’s team involved in the Baja SAE, an annual series of three international collegiate design competitions sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The contest challenges dozens of teams from around the world to design and fabricate an all-terrain vehicle for static and dynamic events and a five-hour endurance race.

The Embry-Riddle women’s Baja SAE team, which has grown to nearly 30 students enrolled in the University’s College of Engineering, is one of only three all-woman collegiate Baja SAE teams in the world and the only one with all-female advisors. This year the team will compete in Baja SAE events in Auburn, Ala., and Portland, Ore.

Women in Aviation Day at Embry-Riddle will conclude with the announcement of the results of the Women in Aviation/Aerospace Essay Competition, which attracted nearly 75 entrants. The girls coming in first, second, and third will win prizes, with the first-place student receiving free enrollment in the Aviation Career Exploration Camp operated by Embry-Riddle’s Summer Academy, worth nearly $1,600.

Support for the event is provided by Embry-Riddle’s Summer Academy Office. For more information, call Pamela Peer at (386) 226-7945 or send an email to summer@erau.edu.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering, educating more than 34,000 students annually in undergraduate and graduate programs. Doctoral programs in aviation and in engineering physics are pending approval by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) for the University to offer programs at the doctoral level. Embry-Riddle educates students at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., through the Worldwide Campus at more than 130 campus centers in the United States, Europe, Canada, and the Middle East, and through online learning. For more information, visit www.embryriddle.edu.