NEW BEDFORD— When Candida Desjardins attended UMass Dartmouth (then Southeastern Massachusetts University) she studied mathematics. People assumed she wanted to become a math teacher.
“No, I want to play with computers,” Desjardins said she told them about what then was an emerging field.
Now decades later, she said, “I get really discouraged because I thought I fought those battles.
“It just makes me nervous when I see little ones that the stereotype is there, that girls don’t do math,” she said.
Desjardins has been working for the U.S. Navy for the past 30 years, and she is now the educational outreach program manager for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Rhode Island.
She also sits on the advisory board of the New Bedford High School Academy of Engineering.
Desjardins was at Roosevelt Middle School Monday with Robert Gadbois, the academy’s coordinator and a lead teacher at the school, who has been “on a mission” to get more girls involved in the academy.
Out of 104 students currently enrolled in the academy, there are only about six girls, he said.
“There are some cultural reasons why students do not go into these fields, they opt for more of the traditional role for women,” such as nurses and teachers, he said later after the presentation at the school.
He added society sends a message that science, math, and working with your hands is for boys.
Gadbois has now spoken to the entire eighth grades at Roosevelt and Keith middle schools, and with about 30 girls at Normandin Middle School. Two UMass Dartmouth female engineering students participated in past presentations.
Kimberly Francis, an electrical engineer, works for the Acushnet Company as the director of engineering at Ball Plant 3.
“When I was their age I had a guidance counselor that told me that I should not really be going into such a difficult field… at the time I wanted to be an architect,” she said.
“That just challenged me, that did not dissuade me,” she said, adding she knew she had good grades.
She said women in that field have to learn to work with men.
At Roosevelt Monday, Gadbois showed students a video about the academy and two students on the high school’s robotics team, Ricardo Matias, 19, and Kathleen Spring-Cornell 17, both seniors, gave a demonstration with a robot.
“It’s exciting for students to see where the math they take in middle school will take them in high school,” and beyond, Roosevelt Principal Margaret Mongiello said.
“We talk to girls all the time about college and career readiness,” she said, adding a lot of times those students never get a chance to see what their opportunities are.