Students help lead 10th anniversary WIESP programs
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“WIESP is more than just an intro to engineering – it’s a space where students start to see themselves in this field, often for the first time,” said Sabrina Jones, the UIC Women in Engineering Programs associate director. “We make sure they’re not only learning hands-on skills, but also connecting with our amazing team, exploring real pathways, and building confidence in who they are and who they can become.”
UIC’s Women in Engineering Summer Programs (WIESP) running this summer are not only hosting both high school students and community college students to broaden access to engineering students who are historically underrepresented in STEM but celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Originally founded by Elsa Soto, now the UIC director of Equity and Inclusion in Engineering at UIC, WIESP has been a transformative experience for hundreds of students throughout Chicago and beyond. To honor the 10th anniversary, this summer WIESP is featuring all six UIC engineering departments for the first time. Every two or three days, students can explore a new discipline through hands-on projects and engaging workshops led by UIC engineering students.
Zaara Haque, a current student in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering and previous WIESP participant, led the BME lessons through a hands-on project emphasizing the connection between engineering and technology with medicine and pathology.
“Through advanced engineering projects and learning about the different pathways in BME, we advised the students on how to display themselves for colleges, how to know which path is best for them, and how to excel as a minority in engineering,” Haque said. “As a result of the impact WIESP had on me, I wanted to give back to the next generation of engineers.”
Along with the introduction to biomedical engineering, Haque led the students in a project about heart monitors.
“I showed the students the circuit and components to make a real electrocardiogram from scratch, as I did in a recent class,” Haque said. “After a short lesson about my research, and how to publish a paper, I proposed an engineering research problem to the students: ‘What is an activity that changes heart activity?’ The students made amazing conclusions with both quantitative and qualitative data proving exercise, laughter, and jump scares, increase heart activity, and while music can decrease heart activity.”
UIC Department of Chemical Engineering student Jazmin Aca led the chemical engineering portion of the WIESP summer program.
“I wanted the students to explore how chemistry can be applied in real-world, hands-on ways, which is a key part of what chemical engineering is all about,” Aca said. “I drew inspiration from the UIC ChemE Car team, which competes in the national AIChE competition where students build a small car powered and stopped by chemical reactions.”
She said that the car’s stopping mechanism is based on the iodine clock reaction, which is a well-known chemical timer. Aca had students use different ratios of reactants, which allowed them to see how reaction conditions influence timing and outcomes. This is how engineers develop calibration curves in real systems.
“While they weren’t building cars, they were engaging in the same kind of problem-solving, data analysis, and iterative testing that chemical engineers use in the field,” Aca said. “By working through this experiment, students gained early exposure to experimental design, teamwork, and the engineering mindset. It’s a meaningful first step in building technical skills and confidence.”