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ChickTech Event to Be Held at Meredith Encourages Girls to Enter Technology Fields

ChickTech Raleigh-Durham is hosting a two-day workshop on December 7-8, 2019 at Meredith College to encourage high school girls to enter computing and technical fields. The event culminates with a tech show on Sunday, December 8, 4 p.m.-5 p.m. at which ChickTech participants will display the projects they built during the workshop to their families and sponsors.

Participants will choose to work on projects such as creating a robot, building a financial application with Angular, making a smartphone application, e-wearables, Raspberry Pi and video production. They will be mentored by industry and academic professionals from high-tech fields. The event is free for 100 girls who have been nominated by their teacher or community advocate in Wake and Durham County Schools. The event is sponsored by Meredith College’s School of Natural and Mathematical Sciences and corporate sponsors including Red Hat, NetApp, Fidelity Investments, and The Coders School.

Siobahn C. Day, an assistant professor of information science/systems in the School of Library and Information Science at North Carolina Central University, an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador, and a BlackcomputeHER Fellow, will be the keynote speaker for this year’s event.

The event is designed as a fun, positive learning experience to build participants’ confidence in their technical abilities, provide positive role models, and create connections with other young women from the area. ChickTech uses free open-source software to lower the barrier for girls to continue their projects at home.

ChickTech is a non-profit organization, founded in Portland in 2013, that has been leading an effort locally to encourage more women to enter high-tech fields and now have around 20 chapters nationwide. The Raleigh-Durham chapter was founded in 2016. ChickTech was founded by Janice Levenhagen-Seeley, who was motivated by her own experiences as a female in a high-tech field to foster a more inviting culture for women.

“It was hard to feel like I belonged as a woman in computer engineering. So I started ChickTech to give other girls and women the support that I didn’t have. I want them to feel like they are welcome and they have unique things that they are bringing to the industry,” Levenhagen-Seeley said.

Melyssa Allen

News Director
316 Johnson Hall
(919) 760-8087
Fax: (919) 760-8330

allenme@meredith.edu